Right, here's the idea. At first i thought that all our wranglings and personal attacks were a bad thing. but then i remembered a book i was reading last week, called 'demystifying mentalities' which dealt with how the sciences and philosophy arose in ancient athens. it basically describes aristotle's efforts at bracketting off his opponents by introducing this demand for rigour. this reminded me of what's going on here in this group. however, one important element of ancient athens is missing from our current endeavours. this is the notion that everything was subjected to the public jury. hence, in the light of this, i propose that we change our methodology and start running loads of polls, that way also forcing everybody in the group to voice an opinion on the issues discussed. what do you think, are you up for this? this can also solve some of our quarrels, in the sense that people will have to be bound by the results of polls. what do you think? please view this as an exercise in democracy
One man one vote? How quaintly anachronistic. I take it that we disqualify criminals, women, and the mad?
Much has changed since the heady days of Athens, but one thing remains the same - Xanthippe is still at home with the pisspot.
hmm it's a philosophy group, so disqualifying the mad would leave us with an empty set (notice: i am talking about myself, not anybody else). but yes, one man one vote.
Half a vote for the women? Three votes each for the criminals?
Yes, yes, yes !
in order to qualify as a criminal, you'd have to show official police documents.
Come on - I live in France... surely that's enough to prove my ineradicable criminality?
no, but seriously. what do you think about my topic?
i really have high hopes for it
It's an excellent thing that you have high hopes - I shall consider them when I, too, am high...
The value of polls is not that researchers produce results, but that results produce philosophers. So I suppose as far as maddening high votes in public are concerned, I'm more of a man than any philosopher...
welcome alison, i'm glad you're feeling at home, we'll do our best to keep it up. my idea is that we furiously argue on something, then put a notion summarising the views in for a vote, and then accept the result of the vote. what do you think?
That, Haris, is about the worst approach to philosophical investigation I've ever heard. It'll probably be very successful.
look at how philosophy arose in the first place. it didn't start because of some dna change in some people's heads, it was born out of the need to convince an audience of stuff. questioning and the development of a rigorous method only came about in order to make the opponents shut up forever, by forcing them into a watertight style, that culminated in geometry. you know what was written in the academy i think, 'people who don't know geometry are not allowed in here'.
You have a depressingly sociological take on the Origins of the Love of Sophia - which means that you're probably right.
Anyway, I'd always thought that Real Philosophy began in the 1870s...
...and that it was much developed by Poles in the twenties and thirties...
you know the comment that somebody has said (not a low-level clerk at the greek ministry of propaganda) that all of western philosophy is just a footnote on Plato. i totally abide by that :)
True enough, I suppose - though the footnotes unfailingly show up the paucity of Plato's thought.
what's paucity?
by the way, i read sth yesterday, that if Plato's style was like silver, Aristotle's was like a river of gold. unfortunately, all we have are esoteric 'lecture notes'. imagine the possibilities, especially if the greek government decides to stop cementing over antiquities when they're building stuff (they have to, otherwise they'd never build anything in athens)
dear all, here are some extracts from a discussion i had with tristan on the subject, please feel free to comment, i'd like some feedback on this.
as for the polls, i'm really serious about them as a way to force a certain style, by sort of filtering via the results what goes on. i've had this idea of direct democracy for a long time in my head, and tried to implement it (unsuccessfully) in the phil society at the University of Bristol. recently i've read a book called 'demystifying mentalities'-basically a book by an anthropologist trying to deconstruct the idea of mentalities and attributing things to social factors- which has given me the ammo i need to project what is happening in the group as something that could potentially lead into something good. on the other hand, i'm dispirited by the participation in the debates, and the polls may be a way of getting people to be more active, though i'm having my reservations about the actual efficacy-it may well turn to be a fiasco. what do you thinK?
[I reordrer the discussion we had, Haris and I, about his democracy and polls]
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Tristan Vanrullen wrote on Jan 21, 2009 11:10 am:
Subject: Re^3: direct democracy
Dear Haris,
It sounds good to me!
i was answering something in that sense i the "i made a poll" thread while you were writing me a message! we cross our messages. I think it's a good idea which demand to be rigorous and neutral about the topics.
Or if it is to make people become more participative, maybe we should make polls before topics rather than polls after topics.... Something about a precise idea or a general interest for a question.
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Haris Shekeris wrote on Jan 21, 2009 11:13 am:
Subject: Re^4: direct democracy
maybe also try to sort of coerce people into voting, in the sense that we say that if there are less than 30 votes in a week then we'll be abandoning the whole project of voting
Haris Shekeris wrote on Jan 21, 2009 11:12 am:
Subject: Re^4: direct democracy
dear tristan, i agree and will be checking your posts. maybe we should do a test, sort of say 'what do you want to discuss?' and put five to six topics, and try to get people to vote just to gauge whether people are interested in this sort of thing. what do you think?
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Tristan Vanrullen wrote on Jan 21, 2009 11:22 am:
Subject: Re^5: direct democracy
i fear the supermarket effect.
we have so much personal work to do.
i'm overwhelmed by the new coming topics! So i'd rather throw a Poll at the start of a topic i want to create.
When we start topics, we have something in our mind that wants to be carved.
For an ex. i've just understood why Emrah created the Nothingness topic, because i asked him.
It would be better for someone who creates a thread or a topic to introduce his subject, and then to make a poll about general advices before he starts debating his subject. So the Poller will know if people are interested in the debate, or if he's going to make his thread alone, and the poller can also ask interactive questions about the underlying opinions of the debaters
maybe i'm too much dreamer about this possibility.
If i make a Topic "projection of Formalisms and Theories into Technical items"
and i introduce my subject and then i make a poll
Do you think that the formal theories can be easily projected into technical items?
Yes / No / don't know / not interested
i will have interesting answers about the general opinion for my topic.
So i will choose if i debate against that or this apriori.
...
We should go on this interesting conversation in the polls topic?
Let's copy/paste some parts of these messages as a discussion in the thread... if you're ok, it sounds good to share.
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Haris Shekeris wrote on Jan 21, 2009 11:29 am:
Subject: Re^6: direct democracy
yup sure, besides me going to london tomorrow will hopefully give other people the chance to have their say on the topic
It seems we have some [sort of] plan. Nice. I'm reminded of a few comments recently that echo your points below....my comment in the 'clean-up' thread: that of being aware of asking the 'good question'; to ensure transparency, focus and threads providing more value...and as Tristan reminded us we have 70+ (?) active thinkers in members as opposed to just -10 active views...
This implies responsibility of not only providing value in discourse but perceived value in representative learning points - which may be done nicely through polls. Perhaps the poll results can be amalgamated into a neat little mindmap package....but I run into danger of overthinking this....
PS: polls at the start could focus on perceptions and polls after, the value of those perceptions after discourse.....and an amalgamation of results could reflect the learning points.
Thanks Alison. Regarding *enough* people to complete the polls: I think the intention of Direct Democracy Polls are effective and have potential if they naturally develop into Representative Democracy of results...it's neither here nor there, just mathematics.
As a non-male, non-land-owner, but bearded-philosopher, I envoke my Sophinian-divine right to vote :
FOR the Poll.
And as Athenian philosophical politics goes:
I vote Haris gets a pat on the back by Big Brother himself...in Room 101...while we watch...and vote...before the pat: what we perceive he thinks of the planned back-slapping scenario.....and vote again, after the pat: how valuable HE and WE thought Big Bother's slap was...and then we produce those results in a mind-map, which can be disseminated to all other beings not in the [public] habit of voyeurism...
"i would like to have the opinion of users about the Trolley Problems : there are 4 situations and i want to know each member's position about these situations. what would they do in each situation?"
This is the Kind of Thing that gives Philosophy a Bad Name.
Remember, Ethics is for Gurlies. Real Men do Metaphysics.
Hmmm - what about the philosopher as policeman?
minitrue mark article badthinkful doubleplusungoodwise. miniluv refer writer to thinkpol re: reform. room 101
And so do I - scientists shoiuldn't be allowed to discuss the interpretation of their theories; it should be left to those of us who have actually been trained to think.
"David, would you say that all scientists are not trained to think?
Or that some are not?"
FOR SOME OF FOR ALL Scientists are not trained to think OR Scientists are trained not to think OR All scientists are werewolves (I can prove that last bit)
"And all those who are not trained to think, does your argument mean that they should let the discussion about the interpretation of their theories be done by philosophers (those who are trained to think, i guess)?"
To be quite honest, I don't think they'd give a fying fluck about what I might argue… I think the real problem comes when the shovel-and-spade men get involved. At the risk of extreme stereotyping, let me explain: the interpretations of major theories are often elaborated rapidly to account for the success of the theory; frequently, these theories are elaborated from the intuitions of a number of "creative types". However, once the theory is opened up to the wider community of research (when we're working out the details and the implications in this field or another), the researchers involved tend to be "shovel-and-spade" men, dedicated and meticulous but uninterested in revisiting the *interpretation* of theory which, to them, is irrelevant speculation. Hypostatic entities which were postulated in the orgasmic heat of the theory's conception become articles of faith. Analogies that were cobbled together to fill an explanatory gap become enshrined as *accounts* of the 'actual nature' of the physical world.
The creative types tend to work directly on the extension or the modification of theory; while we cannot fault their elegance and sophistication in the construction of theory and in its integration with related areas of investigation, they aren't necessarily trained in integrating theory with our more general, intuitive, understanding of the world (that is, of the world we construct from the direct sense impressions received from our immediate environments).
If that serves as an answer, it'll serve as an answer.
It's a delicate question - think of Einstein after the initial years of theory-building.
There's a - quite honestly - parasitic element to the philosopher who considers the correlation betwen physical theory and our phenomenal experience of the world: we don't elaborate theory, we simply consider how successful theories fit into the jigsaw which is our "understanding of the world around us". This doesn't really require the "white-hot brilliance" of a young Einstein, but it does require that we build up as wide an understanding as possible of the issues (both in physical theory and in philosophical accounts of our kowledge and understanding of the world). at a certain point, a theorist would have to ask "do I continue to work in the elaboration and development of theory, or do I start to develop a wider understanding of the "philosophical" implications of theory"... this is perhaps the point where science ends and metaphysics starts off.
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