Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
unable to practice since they have lost their spontaneity. Here belief is paramount—
the subjective takes precedence over the objective. In the world of art this meme
develops in the Romantic tradition. With the same reservations as above we could
adopt the term Postmodern to describe this kind of thinking as it developed in the
late 20th century.
One important distinctions between these two positions is that the former be-
lieves that everything can be explained using rationally/logical methods and the lat-
ter does not.
As a member of the former group I believe that the major shortcoming of the lat-
ter is that it implicitly invokes the need for a quality of the “unexplainable”—some
kind of immaterial “essence” or “soul”. However I am also aware that in science we
now accept (believe in) dark matter and (even more mysteriously) dark energy—
qualities which enable our structural analyses of the universe to make sense but for
which we have little or no direct evidence.
Another interesting comment comes from the British biologist/cybernetician Ge-
off Sommerhoff in his explanation of “freedom of will”. He suggests that freedom
of will is the response of a simple entity (humans) to an environment (the universe)
that seems to be almost infinitely complex. For Sommerhoff freedom of will is no
more than a psychological mechanism for helping us maintain our sanity when faced
with the actuality of our insignificance and our inability to act independently. Tak-
ing this further we can interpret Sommerhoff as suggesting that although everything
is knowable, it is not possible for humans to attain all of this knowledge because of
our inherent system limitations. This seems to me close to Borges map problem—
for a map to be completely accurate it must be—at least—as large (as complex) as
the territory it describes. So for us to be able to fully explain the universe we need
another universe that is, at least as big, to hold the knowledge.
So for me this objective/subjective question can be expressed:
1. I implicitly believe that everything is rationally explainable (there is no essence
or soul);
2. I acknowledge, however, that there are many things that may never be explained;
3. Nevertheless I do not believe that this acknowledgement of limitation should
prevent us from seeking explanations—however hard the problems we address
may be;
4. I believe that the rational analysis and synthesis of aesthetics (and other percep-
tual, cognitive, conceptual and creative processes) is one of the key issues for
humanity to address in the 21st century—we must now apply our systematic
methodologies to our own internal mechanisms (and I'm here using the word
“mechanism” deliberately);
5. If we do not then we are in danger of handing our world over to the priests,
fascists and other bigots whose only wish is to enslave us.
In response to this on-going discussion, Philip Galanter responds in order to
draw out some of the underlying assumptions .
Philip Galanter (PG): In terms of epistemology the (undefended here) subsum-
ing view is that there really are intrinsic unknowns “out there” even though “out
Search WWH ::




Custom Search