Reclaiming Scientific Thought

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The word 'science', for me and everyone I know, simply means natural science. We seem to think that there can only be one science. That science is, and can only be, the systematic study of the natural world. Hypotheses, experiments, theories, models, simulations, forecasts, predictions, prescriptions. All that good stuff.

But there was a time when the word science did not simply mean natural science. There was a time when the word science applied to many disciplines, including aesthetics, ethics, and history. Once there was a time when these disciplines could legitimately claim to be ‘human sciences’. Once it was possible to pursue knowledge about moral, political, and social problems and still be called a scientist. That is, they could claim to be legitimate sources of rational truth about the human world. Science once meant more than natural science. ‘Science’ is of much greater scope and importance than just the natural sciences. 

The word science, in fact, was once interchangeable with the word philosophy. As Collingwood argues, "The idea that philosophy and science are two different things or alternatively that philosophical sciences are sciences of a peculiar kind, is a modern idea of recent origin, later than the time at which these old-established names became traditional. When these names were established, science meant nothing more (and also nothing less) than organized and systematic thought, directed towards the discovery of truths concerning a definite subject-matter." Thus what we call physics once "was called natural philosophy... and what the same fashion calls ethics was similarly moral philosophy" ('Goodness, Rightness, Utility', in The New Leviathan, 391). To use the word 'science' to refer to the natural sciences is a mere slang usage of the term. Originally, it referred to any organized pursuit of truth about a subject.

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Many other disciplines deserve the name science. It is not only the natural world that needs to be studied. And it is not only the natural sciences that seek truth through systematic thinking.

Yet we refuse to dignify these disciplines with the term science. We reserve it exclusively for the natural sciences. We scoff at the arts and humanities, denying their claims to truth. We debate whether or not sociology or political science deserve the label. Madness. Absolute madness. But as Collingwood says, over "the past three centuries, the natural sciences have established themselves in a position of intellectual authority,” and that this authority “is the central fact about modern European civilization" (The Principles of History, 80).  We are the civilization that has sought to dominate nature. That has furiously developed technology. We are the (natural) scientific civilization.

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Limiting the use of the word science as such may lead to some negative consequences. I believe that the marginal position of moral philosophy and history may have something to do with our restriction of the word science.

I'm returning to my reading of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. MacIntyre is convinced that modern forms of morality are necessarily flawed. MacIntyre argues that the challenge of modern ethics was to find a rational basis for morality. The goal of this was to bring philosophy closer to the methods of the natural sciences. In seeking a rational basis for morality modern philosophers (he discusses Kierkegaard, Kant, Diderot, Hume, and Smith) destroyed a fundamental component of ancient Greek morality, the teleological component. That is to say, philosophers were no longer conceiving of man in his practical daily existence, there was no telos, no definite moral end to which philosophy was working. Rather, philosophers pursued timeless truths about morality, hoping to create rational laws "that any rational agent is logically committed to" (After Virtue, 66). As soon as you start talking about 'Man' instead of 'this particular person or group' your philosophy is lost. As MacIntyre puts it, "Morality which is no particular society's morality is to be found nowhere" (Ibid., 265-66). In other words, while moral philosophy once explained action by “reference to the virtues and vices which they have learned or failed to learn and the forms of practical reasoning which they employ,” it gradually became about “laying bare the physiological and physical mechanisms which underlie action” (Ibid., 82). The natural scientific paradigm of mechanistic explanation thus infiltrated moral philosophy, destroying our conception of man as a being capable of inherently good action and instead forcing us to conceive ourselves as physical automatons. For the mechanistic explanation of human action is no explanation at all.

Moral philosophy’s attempt to bring itself closer to the method of the natural sciences thus resulted in the destruction of its foundation, in the end of its connection to the practical concerns of the world. 

History, too, suffers from this limited definition of science. Historical study is so often regarded as inaccurate or ‘subjective’, as a mere collection of facts, as something that fails to provide definite or useful knowledge about ourselves or our world. History, Collingwood believed, was faced with the difficult task of freeing itself from the pupilage of the natural sciences. He believes that the natural sciences have a “well-deserved reputation,” but that unfortunately that reputation is often “used to enforce exorbitant claims, now against the growing, but immature science of history, now against the ancient sciences of logic and ethics... into which that same prestige forbade inquiry, not only as to whether they were justified, but as to what they were” (The Principles of History, 88, my italics). I think I can grant myself the point that the natural sciences have a unique monopoly on ‘knowledge’ in the West, and that this has led to the reduction and humiliation of disciplines like history and moral philosophy. We no longer think of history and philosophy as sources of genuine knowledge. But parlor games, the asking of questions that might be fun to think about but which have no practical purpose. 

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The natural sciences, however, cannot answer the questions that history and moral philosophy attempt to answer. The reason for this is that history and philosophy are sciences of the mind, they deal with Man as a thinking being. The natural sciences can only deal with Man as a biological being. Body belongs to the realm of natural sciences. Mind belongs to the realm of history and philosophy. There are two further reasons the natural sciences are inappropriate for the study of Man. First, natural science is by its nature non-criteriological, it does not make judgements about right and wrong, which a human science must necessarily do. Second, natural science is focused on generalization, while the science of mind is more focused on particularization. 

The first reason natural science cannot handle the question of mind is because it is a non-criteriological science. That is, there is no need in the natural sciences to distinguish between what is good or what is bad. Nature is assumed to have its own organic unity. Scientist’s of the 1700s “believed in the universality and inviolability of ‘natural laws’ and the improbability of dividing nature’s successes from nature’s failures....” (The Principles of History, 83). Human sciences, on the other hand, are always criteriological, they always try to “distinguish successes from failures in the respective fields of theory and practice” (Ibid., 84). The task of the human sciences is thus unique in that it deals with the criteria by which we judge minds. Any understanding of mind has to go through this process of defining criteria. 

The second reason that the natural sciences are inadequate is that they are based primarily on generalization. Understanding mind, however, involves a focus on particulars, on why this thing is exactly what it is and not anything else. Collingwood sums up the argument well: Natural science cannot explain human action because “it explains every case of the kind indifferently, does not explain this case in its concrete actuality, but only those features of it in which it resembles the rest. In short, if I am content with a scientific explanation of a natural fact, the reason is that I am content to think of it not as the unique fact which it is, but merely as an example of a certain kind of fact” (Principles of History, 181). Any study of mind must therefore be concerned with practical criteria and valuation, and must be able to study things in their concrete particularity, understanding what makes them individual and unique, not general and classifiable. 

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The natural sciences, however, still attempt to lay claim to the study of thought. Psychology is probably the discipline that works hardest to study Man at the level of natural science. Collingwood is adamant, however, that psychology cannot be anything more than the study of feeling and sensation. Its contributions to the study of thought and mind are minimal. Again, Collingwood insists, “To study thought without taking into account the fact that people sometimes think truly and sometimes falsely; to study conduct without taking into account the fact that people sometimes act wisely or effectively or honourably, and sometimes in ways the opposite of those; this is no study of thought or conduct at all....” (Ibid., 85). To this day psychologists are insisting that the domain once belonging to history and philosophy will now be answered by modern scientific techniques. In particular, one company believes that we can only obey the Greek maxim ‘Know Thyself’ with the aid of a brain scanner. Ariel Garten, CEO of InteraXon, claims that the technology they are developing will for the first time give us insights into our subconscious patterns that will truly allow us to know ourselves. Madness, I say. Collingwood’s argument that psychology is the science of feeling seems to hold strong in this case. Because all Garten’s technology can supply is statistical information about our stress and anxiety, our heart rate, the connections between brain activity and sensory experience. These machines cannot tell us anything about thought proper. 

Garten’s claims, while shocking, are helpful in that they let me see that psychology is still indeed arrogantly trying to move into the territory rightly occupied by history, philosophy, and the humanities. It helps me understand that Collingwood’s concerns are still alive and well. History still needs to be justified as the science of human affairs. 

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This is the task I am slowly but surely pursuing. These days my thinking is revolving around the concept of the science of human affairs. That method of learning that would  help us deal with the social world. “How could we construct a science of human affairs, so to call it,” Collingwood asked in his Autobiography, “ from which men could learn to deal with human situations as skilfully as natural science had taught them to deal with situations in the world of Nature?” (An Autobiography, 115). That history is the science of human affairs was obvious to Collingwood. How, precisely, historical study was to be wielded to these ends, he was not able to fully say. His health was ill, his thinking not fast enough.

I am thus sitting here in the wake of Collingwood’s death. Wondering about how to do this. How to construct a science of human affairs. I am slowly but surely working on this statement. 

But one thing is clear, one thing has to happen if we are to construct this science of human affairs: We must reclaim, re-appropriate the word science. We cannot hope to vindicate history as the science of human affairs so long as we let the natural sciences distort the words true meaning. We need to reclaim scientific thought, assert to the world that we can have knowledge of the human world. That not all explanation is mechanistic explanation. And that mind, and not just nature, can be known. 

I am a scientist. A human scientist. Don’t tell me I’m not. Because I want to be. I want the title because I want to seek truth about a definite subject matter. And I don’t care that I am pursuing knowledge about mind and not nature. There is a science of mind. And it sure as hell isn’t psychology. We can indeed learn to know ourselves. Not with a brain scanner. But with historical study and philosophical reflection.

Art, Zen, and Insurrection: Finding Personal and Social Change In The Art of Life Part III.1

PART III: Becoming an Existential Aesthetician: Integrating Imaginative Emotional Expression Into Daily Life

This is part III.1 of my essay 'Art, Zen, and Insurrection'. Part III is all about life as an art form and is titled 'Becoming an Existential Aesthetician: Integrating Emotional Expression into Daily Life'. Part III.1 is called 'Identifying Technical Theories Of Existence'. Here is a table of contents:

Part III: Becoming An Existential Aesthetician: Integrating Imaginative Emotional Expression Into Daily Life

1. Introduction

2. Art And Craft In The Social World

III.1. Identifying Technical Theories of Existence

3. The Technical Theory of Life: Modern Times and Overly Crafted Experience
4. The Technical Theory of Politics: David Harvey on the ‘Aestheticization’ of Politics

5. The Technical Theory of Society: John Gray and The Enlightenment’s Over-Reliance on Science and Technology

6. Technical Theories Of Existence As Tacit Mental Theories/Models As Status Functions As Ideology

7. Concluding Part III.1

Part III: Becoming An Existential Aesthetician: Integrating Imaginative Emotional Expression Into Daily Life

1. Introduction

Time to expound the main claim of this whole series of essays. I intend to argue that we can turn our lives into a work of art. Seeing as how I spent a little more than a hundred pages explicating Collingwood’s definition of art and the pragmatics of art, I now think I’m in a good position to explain how this possible. First, just to fill you in, Collingwood defines art as the conscious and imaginative expression of our emotions. Again, I gave this definition extended treatment, so if you really care, then check out Part I. But now I’m going to explain how it is that we can turn our lives into a work of art. I’m going to do this in three sections. First, I’m going to give a brief analysis of the two key terms that this section will be built around, art on the one hand, and craft on the other. Then I’m going to do what Collingwood did, I’m going to present a negative statement about what an artistic life is not. In The Principles Of Art Collingwood spends a bit of time refuting what he calls ‘the technical theory of art’, by which art is identified with craft. Similarly, I want to explain how I think there might be something like a ‘technical theory of existence’, in which life is identified as a craft of sorts. I’ll be identifying three technical theories of existence: that of life, that of politics, and that of society. In each case I’ll be exploring the question of whether these things should be identified simply as a craft, or if we would benefit more from defining them as an art, as a process of expression. That will be Part III.1, ‘Identifying Technical Theories Of Existence’. After the negative component I’ll begin a positive defense of this idea. I’ll be trying to explain how life can become an art form by talking about my inspirations for this idea, about the role of consciousness, language, minds, and choice. That will be Part III.2, ‘Defining The Aesthetic Theory Of Existence’. Lastly, I’ll be making some tentative statement about how we could potentially implement the aesthetic theory of existence. I’ll be discussing status functions, zen, and other ideas about the transformation of the self. That will be Part III.3, ‘Implementing The Aesthetic Theory Of Existence’. After that I’ll be introducing militaristic metaphors in Parts IV and V. That will be the insurrection component.

I think that the main issue I’m trying to tackle by writing about this is one that Collingwood thought incredibly important: the unification of moral philosophy and moral behavior, the unification of thought and action. He rejected the notion that moral philosophy has nothing to do with moral behavior. This was, evidently, the explicit claim of Collingwood’s contemporaries, and I fear that it is the implicit attitude of twenty-first century philosophy. In short, I hate the idea that moral philosophy would say: “I’ll tell you what moral living is. But don’t expect me to tell you how to do it.” Seems like pretty lame philosophy if you ask me. Adorno was also concerned that philosophy was losing its function as a guide to the good life. I’m trying to use philosophy to find a way to live well, as a way to becoming who I want to be. I think that conceptualizing life as an art is helpful, and that it might actually be a defensible idea. But in either case, that is the goal: to use philosophy to live a better life by explaining its potential affinity with art. But first, I want to explain how in our particular historical moment existence seems to be identified more so with craft.

Before I launch into the three subsections of this section, I would like to make a more general statement about the relationship between art and craft in the social world.

Disclaimer that applies to much of my writing: Please forgive my hyperbole. This is a mental exercise, and I don’t know if I believe what I’m about to write. What I do want is to find out what I’m capable of writing.

2. Art And Craft In The Social World

Now, in The Principles Of Art one of Collingwood’s main goals, perhaps his most important goal, is to clarify the distinction between art proper and craft. Craft is defined as the deliberate process of turning a raw material into a finished product based on a preconceived plan. There should be no real changing of the plan during the process of construction, so the finished product should turn out precisely as planned. Collingwood thought that art had become too heavily identified as a form of craft, so much so that the terms were becoming interchangeable. And just to note quickly, that representation, as in the deliberate creation of mental states in other people, is a form of craft. Art, for Collingwood, however, is not simply a craft or a matter of representation, but rather a process by which we imaginatively express our emotions. Art undoubtedly contains elements of craft, but they are not the same thing. In fact, craft is something that is used in service of art. Craft is only useful so long as it allows us to imaginatively express our emotions. As I said, I gave this definition of art an extended look in Part I.2 and I.3. But to rehash quickly, to imaginatively express our emotions means to use consciousness to extend the life of a particular experience or emotions. By focusing our consciousness on a raw emotional experience we are able to change it into something else, we elevate that experience to the level of imagination or idea. We are converting a raw emotions into something that is expressible through language (using the word language in the broadest sense). This is one way that art differs from craft: the process of expression changes the thing that is expressed, and therefore does not fit the definition of craft as the execution of a definite plan. So that is the distinction to grasp, art and craft. What is art, what is craft, how are they related, and why does it matter. It seems undeniable to me that there is a difference between art and craft, and that art has become largely identified as simply a matter of craft. But that can’t be the case. Again, this was what Part I grappled with.

Now the matter is to apply this distinction between art and craft to the concrete realities of the social world. How much does craft have to play a role in our social lives? How much can we make our social interactions become the imaginative expression of our emotions? What would that look like? What are the necessary forms of social craft that we need to engage with?How could social craft be used to make life an art? These are terms, these are the questions, this is what I want to figure out in Part III.

I will now begin parsing these questions by giving a closer look at the issue of craft in different aspects of existence.

III.1 Identifying Technical Theories Of Existence

Now, as I sad, in this section I’m going to be doing what Collingwood did in The Principles Of Art: I’ll be explaining how life, much like art, is incorrectly identified as a craft. The purpose of this is to provide a negative analysis that will lead into my positive analysis of what it would mean for life to be identified with art proper. So this section will be divided into four subsections. In the first three subsections I’ll be identifying three different ‘technical theories of existence’, i.e. three parts of contemporary American life that are thought of as crafts and should perhaps be thought of as arts. After that I’ll be talking about how these technical theories function below the radar, eluding people’s awareness. I’ll go through a process of comparing them to tacit mental theories, to status functions, and to ideology. So first the three technical theories, and then a closer look at how they might function in both micro and macro ways. As for the technical theories themselves, the first will be the technical theory of life, by which I mean that individual existences are thought of crafts, as the execution of plans. Second, I’ll be exploring the idea of a technical theory of politics, in which political behavior is identified with craft and representation rather than expression. For my writing on the technical theory of politics I’ll be drawing on David Harvey’s book The Condition Of Postmodernity and his discussion of ‘the aestheticization of politics’ in the 1980s. Thirdly, I’ll be looking at the technical theory of society as a whole, in which all of social organization is thought of in terms of craft. For that section I’ll be working with John Gray’s book Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals. In short, I’ll be moving from micro to macro, starting with how individuals lives are structured around the notion of craft, moving outward to the political sphere’s relationship with craft, and then even more macro by looking at society as a whole as it relates to craft. Onward

3. The Technical Theory of Life: Modern Times and Overly Crafted Experience

I have been doing all this reading, thinking, and writing on the role of art and craft in life for about three or four months now. In that time it has become much clearer to me how the notion of craft is present in my life and other people’s lives. When I look around me, when I talk to my peers, when I think about life, I see the notion of craft as an intrusive presence, sometimes as a hindrance. When I look at myself I feel myself grappling with the issue of craft and with one of its specific forms: representation. With both craft and representation we are attempting to create turn a raw material into a finished product based on a preconceived plan. But representation differs in that it is meant to create a certain idea or feeling in someone’s mind. So in this section I’m trying to explain how it is that life itself is conceived of as a form of craft. Sure, I can identify all kinds of little instances around me in which craft plays a role in life. But is it possible that much of life itself is identified with craft? There are two ways that I can see this being the case, two ways in which I see craft as a domineering force in my life. First, I see craft as playing a role in the way relationships are played out. Too often I find myself trying to craft my appearance, to represent my personality in certain ways to people. Second, I see craft as an issue in how we conceptualize life as a whole. I worry that life is thought of as something that must proceed by a plan, that life is thought of as a raw material that has to be converted into a certain preconceived end. Let me talk about these things in turn.

I’ve decided that this section is very personal, and so that I’m going to be speaking in very personal ways. This is something I’m doing for myself, something I’m doing to challenge myself to be more expressive, to be less concerned with social craft. So if I say we, I mean I. So I worry that relationships can proceed too rigidly along the lines of craft. I think this is true both in plutonic and romantic relationships.

When I first transfered from UMBC to the University of Maryland in the fall of 2006 I was living at my parents home and was completely horrified by my social prospects. I was living quite far away from College Park and had no sense of how to meet people, and I was insecure and depressed to boot. Things were not looking good for me. I had no idea how to meet people because I was completely fixated on the question of ‘what would I say? what am I supposed to talk about?’ I would plan out conversations in my head and want them to go that way. I would try to stick to these ideas of how a conversation ‘should go’. In retrospect I would say that I was implicitly expecting my social life to proceed along the lines of craft. I was expecting that I had to craft my image, my personality, and my interactions. It caused me enormous amounts of pain.

And perhaps even more importantly I was deadly afraid of expressing myself honestly. There were things that had happened to me, things that had really upset me, that I wasn’t even capable of expressing to myself. It reminds me of what Collingwood calls ‘the corruption of consciousness’: a state in which individuals are incapable of using consciousness to express the emotions, a state in which they simply avoid them through distraction and amusement. I think that my consciousness was corrupted. Furthermore, I think that my inclination towards social planning, my inclination towards craft, made it harder for me to showdown my emotions and exacerbated my inability to express myself, the corruption of my consciousness. So, in short, I was dominated by the idea that conversations were something that needed to be planned and then executed. I was completely incapable of expressing myself without knowing precisely what the outcome would be. Of course craft in the social world never worked out for me. But that didn’t stop me from trying. I can understand my personal experience in light of these ideas. It makes sense to me that art, as in imaginative expression of emotions, is the antidote to the corruption of consciousness. And frankly, I met a professor who was so good at expressing themselves that they allowed me to express myself. I work hard at expressing myself these days, and I think that I want to have a clear consciousness, a consciousness capable of chasing down the secrets I keep from myself.

My fixation with social craft also bled over into my attempts at romantic relationships. I tried to talk to girls that I thought were cute, I tried to think of what I could say, what I could do. But it never worked. I had countless awkward conversations with girls where I was just completely uncomfortable. I was simply incapable of coming up with social plans that would go further than a few words. Social craft really failed me in my romantic attempts because I was lacking any hint of art, any shred of honest expression. I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to simply express myself to someone without wondering why, what was the outcome, what was the plan I was trying to enact. ‘Could you be my next girlfriend? How should I present myself?’ These days I just want to express myself. I don’t want to plan out my relationships, I refuse to craft them. I will be aware of them, I will push myself to be expressive, and I will see what happens. Forget those plans for the world of friends and lovers. Just be honest with yourself, Riley.

I think that craft also plays a role in the planning of life as a whole. I experienced this mainly with college and with the idea of a degree. It seems like the expectation is get a degree that can make you money, go make the money. Life should be a plan. ‘I’m going to get an international law degree so I can tackle issues of shipping in China’ (Holla Miriax). And I’m not trying to be pejorative towards people who do that, to people who execute a life plan. Good for them, I bet there are elements of art in it. But the issue is a little more difficult for those of us who don’t have degrees that immediately translate into a career. I have a history degree. ‘What are you going to do with that?’ someone might ask. I’m going to die some day, I might reply. Or I could tell them about my vague ambitions to become a scholar, but that wouldn’t sound very planned. At Christmas I had a conversation with a family member about someone who had really ‘executed the life plan.’ They had goals and they fulfilled them, straight up, did it all. They described this person, however, as rigid in his worldview despite his success. I wonder how good it is to really have a life plan and to try and execute it. I wonder how easy it is. I suspect it is very hard. It seems like so many people end up doing all kinds of things that they never thought they would. It seems like it might be better to let ourselves drift into the world as expressive people, and not as crafted people. I can’t execute a life plan because my ambitions are too grand and too uncertain.

Now one issue is that It isn’t clear to me where this tacit technical theory of life comes from. Why is it that relationships and life are seen as things that ought to be planned. Collingwood, however, drops a few clues as to how craft plays a larger role in our social existence. He says that in the modern age art is overwhelmingly identified with craft, and that this confusion is exacerbated by modern disciplines like psychology and economics: To confuse art with craft, he says, "is actually the way in which most people nowadays think of art; and especially economists and psychologists, the people to whom we look (sometimes in vain) for special guidance in the problems of modern life" (19). I find it interesting how Collingwood references guidance in modern life, and how these disciplines are supposed to help us with our lives. How much do we still look towards these types of figures for guidance? How much do we think of economists and psychologists as wise individuals who would understand how life should be lived in these confusing times? But how dangerous is it that they are operating under an erroneous definition of art that identifies it as mere craft? Collingwood makes the confusion between art and craft in the modern age even more explicit when he says that “It is an error much encouraged by modern tendencies in psychology, and influentially taught at the present day by persons in a position of academic authority; but after all it is only a new version, tricked out in the borrowed plumage of modern science, of the ancient fallacy that the arts are a kind of craft” (34). Collingwood seems to think there are things going on in the modern world that encourage the confusion of art and craft.

As I’ve been saying, the confusion of art and craft concerns me because I fear it encourages to live a life that is weighed by planning, a life that isn’t quite expressive enough, a life that puts pressure on us to ‘execute a life plan’. Furthermore, I fear that it introduces an unhealthy amount of generalization into our experiences. Psychology and economics make a living off of describing things, describing our patterns, our tendencies. And of course this is all very useful, it gives us a much richer knowledge of things. But it also damages our ability to express ourselves, and therefore makes it more difficult for us to live an artistic life: “The reason why description, so far from helping expression, actually damages it, is that description generalizes. To describe a thing is to call it a thing of such and such a kind: to bring it under a conception, to classify it. Expression, on the contrary, individualizes” (112). An artistic life would be one that regarded its own experiences as individual, as novel, as nuanced, and not as simply general. I don’t want to live a general, archetypical life, I refuse. Just like an artist, I want to get “as far away as possible from merely labeling... emotions as instances of this or that general kind,” and rather go to “enormous pains to individualize them by expressing them in terms which reveal their difference from any other emotion of the same sort” (113). That is what I want from my life. I want to express myself by particularizing my emotions and my experiences. I refuse to believe that I am archetypical or general.

So that is basically the explication of the ‘technical theory of life’ that I want to give. I’m pleased that I made this a personal section, because that is what it is. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I felt that craft was sometimes an intrusive presence in my life. So I talked about some of my experiences where I felt overwhelmed by the task of expressing myself, how I felt hindered by my focus on crafting my relationships. Then I talked about how I felt a similar anxiety or frustration with the way life is structured around ‘life plans’ in which we choose a major and it sets our path. Lastly I presented some of Collingwood’s quotations in order to show that he thought that craft was encouraged by the modern world and that it invaded more aspects of life than just art. Now I”ll discuss the technical theory of politics and of society.

4. The Technical Theory Of Politics: David Harvey On The ‘Aestheticization’ Of Politics

I had this idea about a technical theory of politics while I was reading David Harvey’s book The Condition of Postmodernity. A most fascinating book that makes some compelling claims about how postmodernism is a historical condition that was brought about by a switch from a Fordist-Keynesian economic model to a new model of flexible capital accumulation that is characterized by a less stable permanent working force, the growth of fictitious forms of capital, and more corporate power, among other things. Harvey believes that this switch to more flexible modes of capital accumulation brought about a new round of ‘space-time compression’, meaning that the way we experience space and time has been altered. Because of this wave of technological and economic change we think of the world as a much smaller place, we think of it in more abstract ways, and generally our experience of space and time is very different.

One hallmark of these different changes is what Harvey calls ‘the aestheticization of politics’. The phrase is actually Walter Benjamin’s, who I need to read soon. But the idea is generally that politics is no longer about transparency or honest expression, but is rather about representing things in different ways than they actually are. I believe Benjamin was concerned with the way that the Nazis were representing themselves in certain ways and actually doing other things. Harvey uses this idea of the aestheticization of politics to talk about the Reagan administration and the disparity between their rhetoric and the realities of the country during those years. During the Reagan administration record numbers of people became unemployed, became homeless, went below the poverty, lost their health insurance, and so on. There were all kinds of things that went terribly wrong in that period: “Between 1979 and 1986, the number of poor families with children increased by 35 percent, and in some large metropolitan areas, such as New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans, more than half the children were living in families with incomes below the poverty line” (Harvey, 331). Harvey says, however, that the Reagan administration did not receive much criticism for these faults. Rather, they are regarded as one of the last great traditional administrations, lauded as the conservative heros of the 1980s. Harvey says that this is so because aesthetics, as opposed to ethics, is the dominant way that the Reagan administration handled itself. They made an effort to make themselves look good, to have a strong and identifiable rhetoric, and not to enforce moral values. “A rhetoric that justifies homelessness, unemployment, increasing impoverishment, disempowerment, and the like by appeal to supposedly traditional values of self-reliance and entrepreneurialism will just as freely laud the shift from ethics to aesthetics as its dominant value system” (Harvey, 336). The aestheticization of politics is therefore the concealment of bad policy with pleasant rhetoric.

I have issue with this phrase, however. Because I think that when they talk about the ‘aestheticization of politics’ they might be identifying aesthetics primarily with craft. Because to me what Harvey seems to be describing is that politics has been infiltrated craft and representation. It is not an expressive that characterizes the politics that Harvey describes, but rather a crafting and representing. Collingwood is adamant that aesthetics must first and foremost deal with the issue of expression, with the creation of aesthetic objects, with the aesthetic experience, and not with the issue of beauty. Aesthetic theory as the theory of beauty is fully rejected by Collingwood as a vestige of the notion that art is a sort of craft. Harvey, however, seems to be implicitly endorsing the identification of art as a sort of craft. What he describes in the Reagan administration is undoubtedly political craft and representation, not aesthetic expression. Furthermore, Harvey speaks of aesthetics and ethics as if though they are antithetical. Which I certainly do not think is the case. I think Collingwood thought that a proper understand of aesthetics could undoubtedly lead to moral behavior. If we are expressing ourselves in genuine ways, if we are engaging in the aesthetic activity, then we are engaging in a pursuit of truth and morality. If we had a true aestheticization of politics we could unify ethics and aesthetics.

If this is correct, if the notion of ‘the aestheticization of politics’ that Harvey and Benjamin speak of, is founded on an improper definition of the aesthetic as a form of craft, then what we might be dealing with is not an aestheticization of politics, but rather a technical theory of politics in which it is thought of as simply a matter of craft and representation. All this smoke in mirrors and politics, all this rhetorical deception, I refuse to call that aesthetic. That idea is so polluted with the technical theory of art that it is insane. If this is true, then what we might really need is a ‘true aestheticization of politics’, in which politics becomes a matter of an individual genuinely expressing their emotions and thoughts. A true aestheticization of politics would be the antidote to this technical theory of politics in which it is just a matter of representative deception. This is a very interesting idea to me. Because the aestheticization of politics is a very key idea for Harvey, and probably for Benjamin. But to me it seems so obvious that it is functioning under the technical theory of art. I wonder what a true aestheticization of politics would look like, what it would look like for aesthetic expression to enter the political world.

But anyways, that is all I’d like to say about the technical theory of politics. It seems to me that defining aesthetics properly might have some political implications, which I’ll be looking at more in Parts IV and V. But for now I want to say that this seems like another way in which craft has infiltrated the social world and has numbed us to any genuine sense of aesthetic value. To talk about the aestheticization of politics is a false definition of aesthetics, and it is another way that the technical theory of art has become a technical theory of existence. Now I’ll talk quickly about the technical theory of society as a whole.

5. The Technical Theory of Society: John Gray and The Enlightenment’s Over-Reliance on Science and Technology

My main inspiration for this idea of a technical theory of society is John Gray’s work in Straw Dogs, and the little bit that I have read of Enlightenment's Wake. John Gray is a political philosopher at London School of Economics who writes on problems of contemporary society and political philosophy. One of his major criticisms of contemporary work is that few philosophers or politicians are willing to question the values of the Enlightenment. In particular, Gray believes that contemporary thinkers clings to the ideal of “subjecting all human institutions to a rational criticism and of convergence on a universal civilization whose foundation is autonomous human reason” (Gray, 1995, 24). Gray believes that the strict adherence to these abstract ideals of reason and justice prevents political philosophers from having any real impact on the present. Because if we are so concerned with ‘justice’ and ‘man’ in the abstract we will have no way of apprehending the realities of our current political and social situation. Similarly, in Straw Dogs, Gray attacks secular liberal humanists for their over-reliance on science and technology as forces of social good. He says that the Enlightenment projects faith in reason, science, and technology has given people the idea that we can solve all of societies problems, that we can cure all the diseases, that salvation for everyone is possible. Gray sounds awfully nihilistic at times. But that doesn’t mean he is pessimistic. It means that he believes we are operating under erroneous assumptions about the social and political world, and that they need to be destroyed so that we can begin to think freshly about these problems. And for Gray, overcoming the legacy of the Enlightenment is one of the most important tasks. We can’t keep thinking that abstract and rational liberal values will be able to apply to every situation in the world, because clearly they won’t.

To me this has a few things in common with the distinction between art and craft. First and foremost, it sounds to me like the Enlightenment was preoccupied with a technical theory of society: that we needed to come up with a plan and rationally enact it through the raw materials of society. For the Enlightenment the creation of the ideal society is merely a matter of craft. John Gray doesn’t seem to think that this is possible, however. He believes that the adherence to these abstract ideals of the Enlightenment has prevented political philosophers from really reckoning with the concrete problems that face politicians nowadays. This brings me to two further connections between Gray’s work and Collingwood’s work on aesthetic theory. First, the issue of generalization and particularization. Second, the relationship between art and the attitude of modernity. Collingwood is clear that art is all about particularizing things; labeling is to be avoided at all costs. Gray, similarly, is chastising political philosophers for relying too heavily on abstract and general terms like ‘man’, ‘reason’, ‘justice’, and so on. Now if we were to embrace a more aesthetic notion of politics and society then perhaps we would be more able to recognize the nuance of political and social issues, thus making better decisions that weren’t confined by the analytical concepts of the Enlightenment. This leads perfectly into the relationship between art and the attitude of modernity. Collingwood claims that aesthetics is about grappling with the particulars of our time and place, about apprehending our own age and working within it. This is one reason that particularization is so important: it allows us to grapple with the nuances of our own age, it allows us to have a modern perspective on ourselves, and our society. I think that John Gray would agree based on his argument that political philosophy is inert because of the hope “that human begins will shed their traditional allegiances and their local identities and unite in a universal civilization grounded in generic humanity and a rational morality.” And that because of this philosophers “cannot even begin to grapple with the political dilemmas of an age in which political life is dominated by renascent particularisms, militant religions and resurgent ethnicities” (Gray, 1995, 2). In short, if political philosophy is to contribute to the ongoing struggle of society it needs to abandon its adherence to the generic principles of the Enlightenment and learn to grapple with the particular realities of the contemporary world. To me it sounds like social and political philosophy needs to embrace aesthetic values of particularization and grappling with the present.

Thus there seems to be something like a technical theory of society that has come out of the Enlightenment. We still believe that society can be transformed from a raw material into a universal and rationally moral society. But clearly society cannot be crafted like a table. I don’t know precisely what an aesthetic theory of society would look like, except for the emphasis on particularization of the contemporary that I described above. But it seems obvious that the technical theory of society is a thing, and that the Enlightenment gave rise to it. I look forward to reading the rest of Enlightenment’s Wake.

Now that I have run through the three technical theories of existence, that of life, that of politics, and that of society, I now want to explore how they would function in individual minds.

6. Technical Theories Of Existence As Tacit Mental Theories/Models As Status Functions As Ideology

Now that I have identified these three technical theories of existence I have to ask myself how they function, how they are disseminated among individual minds, through what mechanisms they work, how they function both on the micro and macro levels. So I’ll be vaguely examining these categories in terms of three different ideas: that of tacit mental theories/models, that of status functions, and that of ideology. Here I go.

So one thing I am fairly concerned with is how these things would function in individual lives, how they would work in individual minds. And I am fairly convinced that individual minds engage with the world in terms of tacit mental theories and mental models of reality. This idea of tacit mental theories is a current vein of analysis in contemporary philosophy of mind. While the notion of mental modeling is an idea from neuropsychology. In both cases the idea is that there is a structure to our thoughts and perceptions, that we have certain unconscious theories that we rely on to understand ourselves and other people, or that our brain models reality in certain ways. So that what we experience in the world is not necessarily the actual world, but our perception of the world as filtered by our tacit theories and mental models. This is why Chris Frith claims that ‘perception is a fiction that coincides with reality’. These technical theories of existence, therefore, would have to exist in some way in our tacit theories and mental models. David Harvey actually hints at this idea. I think he is drawing on Frederick Jameson’s idea of ‘cognitive mapping’, which sounds similar to mental modeling to me: “The transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation, such as it has been, ought to imply a transition in our mental maps, political attitudes, and politics institutions.... There is an omni-present danger that our mental maps will not match current realities” (Harvey, 305). So we have to think about how our individual experiences are structured by these technical theories of existence. I think it would be useful to think in these terms just so that we can analyze our own perceptions and thoughts more carefully. How often does craft inform your model of reality?

So the next question is this: if my mental models are what influence me to perceive the relationship between life and craft in this way then what constitutes my mental models? Where do they come from? One answer I have is that they are constituted by the sea of status functions that regulate our social life. I was at work the other day talking to a friend about this. A box had been moved from a shelf. The box had been on this shelf the entire time i have worked there, so to see this shelf without the box was a startling thing. I was like whoa, I have always expected that box to be there, and now it isn’t. I told my friend that my model of reality had been broken a little, and that I had to reconfigure it. He then pointed out that it had been a status function: all of us at the cafe had implicitly decided that that shelf was designated for that particular box. So I began to perceive the relationship between status functions and mental models. Our models of reality are constituted by the status functions that constitute our social reality. Change the status functions and we change our mental models. So then don’t these technical theories of existence probably have status functions that constitute them? And so therefore they exist in our mental models because they exist as status functions? Probably. Sounds abstract, don’t know how to clarify this right now.

Now what about ideology? What is ideology? How does it work? Well recently I have been keen on Slavoj Zizek’s definition of ideology as a sort of unspoken structure to the world. He says that ideology is politeness, it is habit, it is all of the things that we do without realizing that we do it, or it is all the things that we notice but pretend we don’t notice. Ideology is above all a structure to our experiences. This sounds an awful lot like how status functions, and how mental models work. I think that there is a relationship between all these things, between our mental models, between status functions, and between ideology: they are different manifestations of the same social structure. Mental models are the individual manifestation, status functions are their linguistic constituents, and ideology is the manifold collection of status functions and mental models.

So then, the technical theory of existence must therefore operate on all of these levels, it must in some ways be ideological, it must exist in terms of status functions, and it must exist in our minds as mental models.

7. Concluding Part III.1

So, then this is all I will write for Part III.1. I’ve tried here to clarify the tension between art and craft in the social world. I’m trying to explain how it is that our lives can become an aesthetic project, a project or imaginatively expressing ourselves. But before I explain that positively I had to undertake this negative component of explaining how it is that existence is largely identified with craft. So I explained how there is such a thing as a technical theory of life, of politics, and of society. I tried to argue that our lives and our relationships can sometimes be thought of as crafts, as something that needs to be planned and executed, thus moving it further away from simply emotional expression, removing it from an aesthetic life. I tried to explain how politics, too, had become a matter of craft and representation, and how it too was distanced from aesthetic expression by this emphasis on craft. Finally I tried to explain how society itself had fallen victim to craft, how the Enlightenment project made us believe that society can be transformed from a raw material into a preconceived plan based on generalities. Finally I explained how these technical theories of existence would function in terms of mental models, status functions, and ideology. In all three of these areas I believe that we would benefit from introducing a proper conception of aesthetics into the picture. Perhaps then we could regard our lives as a process of expression, and not a process of enacting a plan. We could regard politics as something that would be about expressing beliefs, about expressing ethic, rather than simply representing things. And we could perhaps think of society as something to be founded on expression and not on crafting. Let me now undertake a positive defense of this idea that our life can become a process of expression, a work of art. I want to explain how life itself can become an art form.

The Science and Art of Minds: Theory and Practice in the Social World

I fell apart at the end of this essay. There is so much to articulate here. But I'm so tired and can't muster my thoughts right now and want to be done with this one. I finished it. But there should be sub sections in each chapter, but I can't do that right now.

Table of Contents:

1.

Military Theory and the Relationship Between Theory and Practice

2.

Life and Decision Making as the Art of Minds

3. Theory of Mind as the Science of Minds

4. The Conflict Between the Art and Science of Minds

5. Uniting the Science and Art of Minds: Zen and the Creative Application of Principles

6. The Content of a Theory of Mind: Science and Genealogical History

7. The Application of a Theory of Mind: Theoretically Supported Study of Our Own and Other People's Experience

This essay has been prompted by my essay of 8/30/10 called 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind'. In that essay I tried to argue that theory of mind needed to be conceptualized as a fundamentally historical project that should be focused on the study of the humanities. I tried to explain how history was essential to the construction of a theoretical body of knowledge about minds. I then tried to argue that this body of theory should be applied primarily to the study of the humanities with the goal of acquiring synthetic experience that would lead to an increased capacity for empathy and judgment.

I am now realizing that I can perhaps frame these difficulties in terms of science and art. Frankly, I think that these two terms are inadequate and are partially escaping my grasp at this point. But the general idea is that with theory of mind there is a noticeable tension between theory and practice. Theory of mind seems to amount to a body of theoretical knowledge that is constructed primarily out of scientific and philosophical evidence. But the application of that theory is not clear. So when I say the science of minds I am generally referring to the creation of systematic knowledge about minds. But I think that the real application of that theory can only happen through daily life and decision making, through the art of minds. And right here I am exploring the idea that daily life and social decision making can be considered an art of minds. If that phrase is appropriate. At this moment I sort of like it.

I suppose right now I'm not necessarily exploring the historical component of theory of mind. I do believe that I made some alright arguments about why history has to be incorporated into theory of mind. Interestingly, I think it needs to be incorporated at both levels – both in the construction of theoretical knowledge about minds and in the application of that theory to the study of the humanities.

But here I suppose I am more interested in exploring this relationship between technical knowledge (science/theory) and practical and creative living (practice/art). I want to explore this relationship both generally and specifically as it relates to theory of mind. First I am going to explain how military theory initially introduced me to the theory/practice, science/art dichotomy and the solution that I favor. Then I'd like to elaborate on this idea that theory of mind is somehow the science of minds, and that real living and decision making is an art of minds. After that I'll try to use zen to explain how the science of minds can be applied to the art of minds (i.e. how theory of mind can help us make better decisions in the social world). After that I'll attempt to more clearly restate the ideas that I first came upon in my GOMM essay. I'll try to explain succinctly how theoretical knowledge of minds needs to be constructed of both scientific knowledge about brains/minds and from historical knowledge that tells us about the contemporary states of minds. Lastly I'll try to explain more clearly how this theory of mind (which is both scientific and historical) should be applied to the study of the humanities with the goal of improving sensitivity, empathy, and intuitive judgment.

Military Theory and the Relationship Between Theory and Practice

So the conflict between theory and practice, and some solutions to the problem, have been highlighted by my work in military history. Military decision making has two traits that make it valuable in this discussion of theory and practice – it is a field that involves an overwhelming amount of practical decision making, and it has been subjected to a plethora of theorizing. This makes it a very useful field for gauging this relationship between theory and practice. Another important thing to note is that military practice is often about decision making. Because my main concern here is the theory and practice of social decision making, military history offers a nice lens for this focus on decision making.

There are two military theorists that I want to discuss, both of which I learned about from Jon Sumida, Alfred Mahan and Carl von Clausewitz. Both of these authors were concerned primarily with the education of command ability – they wanted to figure out the best way to train people to make difficult military decisions. Both authors were also concerned with how theoretical/technical knowledge could be used to train the decision making ability of commanders. The biggest problem in educating command with theory has to do with the role of language: theory relies entirely on language, while command decision making relies mostly on intuition, which is decision making without the aid of language and rationality. So the problem becomes bridging this gap between the strictly articulable nature of theory with the intuitive nature of command decision making. How to use language to train a form of decision making that doesn't rely on language?

Then the question for military theory becomes that of intuition. How is intuition trained? How do you train this creative and intuitive form of decision making? The short answer is experience. You need experience in order to get better at intuitive decision making. So then the crucial thing becomes the relationship between theory and experience: How does theory help describe experience? How does theory help us learn from experience? How does theory help us replicate/synthesize experience?

Mahan and Clausewitz both posed different sorts of answers to this question of how to best use theory to learn from experience. My understanding of Mahan is rough and only second hand from Sumida's book. My understanding of Clausewitz is a bit better because I have read large portions of his writing. That being said, Mahan believed that technical and theoretical knowledge could be used to help us learn more from actual experience. Further, Mahan also believed that history could be a source of experience that theory could help us learn from. Mahan believed that by learning the technical and theoretical aspects of command, and applying them to the study of historical and real experience, one could learn to exercise the art of command. So for Mahan the study of scientific ideas was meant only to improve your ability to exercise the art of decision making. Sumida compares Mahan's views on theory and experience to zen. Sumida says that zen similarly provides rules for conduct, but that they must be applied only loosely and leave room for judgment and creativity. I'll explore this comparison to zen more closely when I talk about theory of mind more closely.

Clausewitz also believed that theoretical and technical knowledge was useful only so long as it facilitated an education that was grounded in experience. Clausewitz, however, believed that history could not only help us learn from experience, but that history could provide an adequate substitute for experience. He believed that historical study combined with intelligent theoretical historical surmise could provide a synthetic experience of sorts. If we were to study history with the intention of reenacting/simulating the thoughts of past commanders we would be gaining access to the difficulties of high command and thus a synthetic experience.

So based on what Mahan and Clausewitz said about military theory I want to make a few things clear. 1. Military decision making is about the social world and therefore cannot be a matter of applying rigid technical or theoretical ideas, but rather intuitive decision making. 2. Because military command requires intuition it has to be trained primarily through experience. 3. Theoretical knowledge thus has to be directed towards either the acquisition of real experience or synthetic experience. 4. Because it is about intuitive decision making it is akin to an art form, the art of command social decision making.

So then, military theory offers me a model of how to conceptualize the relationship between scientific/theoretical knowledge and the art/practice of decision making. I want to import these general conclusions to what I am calling the science and art of minds. I'm trying to explain how there exists a similar gap between theory and practice with theory of mind. I think that decision making in the social world, like in the military world, has to be intuitive and creative. This means that experience is also a valued commodity in the social world just like it is in the military world. I will therefore argue that theory of mind has to be directed at the acquisition of real experience or synthetic experience. And I think that because social decision making is intuitive and creative, and because it revolves mainly around minds, can be considered an art of minds. So then from here, using this model from military theory, I'm going to talk about how to unite the science/theory of minds with the art/practice of minds. How to unite theoretical knowledge about minds with their practical engagement in the social world.

First I'm going to dwell for a bit longer on this notion of social decision making as the art of minds. Then I'm going to spend some time with this idea of theory of mind as a body of scientific knowledge. So I just want to really ground these terms art and science in theory of mind. From there I will explain the connection to zen more clearly. After that I'm going to rehash what this has to do with a genealogical theory of mind that is aimed at acquiring synthetic experience for the purpose of becoming more sensitive.

Life and Decision Making as the Art of Minds

So how is it that life can be considered an art form? Is it possible that all of life and decision making can be an art form? If so, can it be considered an art of minds? My sense for all of this is yes. Life can indeed be an art form, and it can be an art form that is executed as an art of minds.

I think there are probably two different things I want to talk about to make my case for this. I think this is probably weak evidence, but I'm very new to this idea that life is the art of minds. But I will talk about Foucault's notion of the 'aesthetics of existence', and then I'll talk about Collingwood and the few parts of The Principles of Art that I have looked at.

Now in The Use of Pleasure Foucault discusses ancient Greek sexual practices. He talks about how their major concern was not to master their desires, but to use pleasure. They were engaging in self-disciplined use of food, alcohol, and sex. This self-disciplined engagement with pleasure was meant to build a beautiful reputation. Foucault claims that they were engaging in this disciplined lifestyle so that they could have a beautiful reputation in their community that would then allow them to exercise political power with more authority, and it would allow them to leave a beautiful legacy for future generations. Foucault says that this can be called an aesthetics of existence. Why does art need to stop at painting, sculpting, or the other accepted mediums? Why can't life itself become a form of creative expression? Why can't life be an art form? The ancient Greeks provide some strong evidence that life can indeed become an art form, that it is possible to try and beautify your existence for yourself and for those around you.

Now accept for a moment that life can indeed be an art form. Accept that there is such a thing as the aesthetics of existence. Ask the question, How would this aesthetics of existence be actualized? Or how is any aesthetic affect realized? It would be realized in the mental world. How could this aesthetics of existence exist anywhere other than in minds? The art would be taking place in the mind of the individual that is trying to build a beautiful reputation and existence, and it would take place in the minds of the individuals who recognized that someone had achieved a beautiful existence. In short, based on this short line of reasoning I feel comfortable concluding that life can be considered the art of minds. It would be a way to produce a beautiful life both in your own mind and in the minds of others.

But I will corroborate this slightly with what I have read in Collingwood's The Principles of Art. Collingwood basically says that art has to meet two criteria: it has to be expressive and imaginative. I think that Collingwood also says that art has to be 'language' of some sort, which does not mean just words. Anything can be language. Now what is to prevent me from thinking that life and the decisions that are made in life cannot be both expressive, imaginative, and linguistic? Well, my essay On Creativity was a lot of fun to write and I really feel like I made a good case that all of life, language, and decision making could be creative. I also feel that life and decision making can be expressive, imaginative, and creative. I plan on reading The Principles of Art once I finish what I'm reading right now. But even my skimming seems to suggest that life itself can be an art in Collingwood's eyes. Furthermore, with Collingwood's emphasis on minds, I have no problem concluding that living and making decisions in the social world should be considered the art of minds.

I also want to point out real quickly that I have already said in numerous places that minds function intuitively. That the art of minds is not something that could happen deliberately or rationally. We have to learn to do this sort of expressive and creative social interaction on an intuitive level.

Now let me talk about how theory of mind is more so the science of minds.

Theory of Mind as the Science of Minds

Now here when I am talking about science I mean it in in its most general form. Even with that being said, I fear that the term doesn't quite apply to what I'm talking about here. But I'm talking about science as the production of a systematized body of knowledge that is supposed to achieve the full explanation of a phenomena, and often the prediction of that phenomena, and even prescription for action within that phenomena.

So is theory of mind really a science of mind? For one thing I can say that theory of mind draws primarily on scientific and technical information. Theory of mind typically uses the results of neuroscience or psychology, and also utilizes armchair thought experiments. But in any case, theory of mind is an articulated body of knowledge. Alvin Goldman does say explicitly that he is trying to create a comprehensive theory of mind. What that means, I'm not sure.

In this section I'm going to make a quick concession: I think this term is 1. eluding my grasp for the most part, and 2. probably inadequate for what I'm trying to talk about.

Basically I'm just saying here that theory of mind is an articulated body of knowledge that relies primarily on scientific evidence. And it is therefore in contrast to the actual practice of minds.

I think that calling theory of mind a science of mind will make more sense if I explain the conflict between the science and art of minds.

The Conflict Between the Art and Science of Minds

What I'm trying to talk about is how theory of mind is a clearly articulated body of knowledge about minds. It is always rooted in language, in articulation. And seeing that real interaction of minds functions primarily on an intuitive level (i.e. it functions without language), there is conflict between the theory and practice of minds. I am using the terms science and art to highlight the conflict between the theory and practice of minds.

Having established that engaging with minds can be an art, I want to figure out how to contrast that well. Mahan talked about the art and science of command. So I am talking about the art and science of minds. But I don't know if that makes sense.

But again, the point is this: theory of mind is an articulated body of knowledge that does not translate into real action in any clear way. Theory of mind is incapable of providing any kind of prescriptive action for the real world of minds. So there is a clear conflict between the theory of minds and the practice of minds. I want to specify the pragmatics of theory of mind more clearly. That is why these terms science and art are useful right now. Because I'm trying to explain how social decision making is an intuitive, creative, and expressive process that is akin to an art form, but that theory of mind is a systematized and articulated body of knowledge that has no direct connection to actual practice of minds, which is something like a science. So I'm using this dichotomy of science/art to explain how I want to turn theory of mind into a practical guide to daily living. I'm trying to unite the science and the art of minds. I'm trying to make it so that theory of mind can help us exercise the art of minds. I think this can be done. But it is tricky. I'm struggling with it, obviously. As I should be, right?

So generally the conflict is between theory of mind and the practice of minds: theory of mind is a clearly articulated and scientific body of knowledge, but the practice of minds is an intuitive process of social interaction that does not rely on language or reason. Theory of mind is like a science, while living in the world of minds is something like an art. Theory of mind does not lead to any obvious form of action. So I want to find a way to make this science of minds helpful in the art of minds.

I'm going to move on and try to clarify how I want to do this. I'm going to explain this unification of the science and art of minds in three sections. First, I'm going to scrape the surface a little bit with a reference to zen. Then I'm going to talk about how I want to reconfigure the body of theory that a theory of mind would use. Then I'll talk exactly about how I think it should be applied.

Uniting the Science and Art of Minds: Zen and the Creative Application of Principles

I only want to briefly compare this whole thing to zen. I haven't read nearly enough on zen, so I won't even try to make this clear or long. But I will say that when I read Jon Sumida's book on Alfred Mahan, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command, I was struck by the way that zen can be applied to this issue of the 'science' and 'art' of something. Sumida describes how Mahan's views on naval command were similar to the way that zen approaches formal propositions. Mahan believed that formal rules could not be rigidly applied to command decision making. They rather had to be used as a set of principles that allowed room for flexibility and creative judgment. Zen regards moral principles in the same way. Zen has a certain number of things that it holds to be true about good or proper living. But these rules are never to be rigidly applied to life. They are to be applied loosely, flexibly, and creatively. Judgment is supreme, and rules are only useful so long as they aid in the process of judgment.

I think that theory of mind should have a similar goal in mind. I think that theory of mind should come up with a series of propositions about the ways that minds work. It should explain as best we can how they work, and how we can interact with them. But theory of mind can never be prescriptive, so it needs to be an aid to judgment. The social world is about exercising judgment in relations of minds. But I bet theory of mind could be an aid to judgment in the social world, the world of minds.

But what principles should theory of mind use? Let me explore.

The Content of a Theory of Mind: Science and Genealogical History

I think that a theory of mind should consist of at least two elements that are somewhat distinct. The first is what theory of mind typically revolves around: scientific and philosophical evidence. Theory of mind typically draws on evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and general philosophical arguments. These traditional elements are crucial to theory of mind, obviously. The discovery of mirror neurons, neuroplasticity, all kinds of psychological experiments–all of this offers a lot to a theory of mind.

But I believe that a theory of mind also has to contain historical information. It needs to use genealogical historical methods to try and figure out what exactly is going on with minds in the present. It needs to figure out what minds in the past were like, and use that information to determine how minds have developed historically, and exactly how they are functioning in this historical moment. Culture has so much to do with minds, I don't see any way that a theory of mind could really function without historical study.

So I'm proposing that the content of theory of mind needs to be expanded to include historical information. I argued all of this in my essay 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind'.

The Application of a Theory of Mind: Theoretically Supported Study of Our Own and Other People's Experience

So, I've told you in these last two sections that theory of mind needs to be regarded as a loose set of rules and principles that are to be intuitively and creatively applied in the social world as aids to judgment, and that a theory of mind can't possibly be adequate unless it uses historical evidence in conjunction with scientific evidence and philosophical argument. Now I just want to explain briefly how I think this theory of mind should be used as an aid to the study of our own and other people's experience. I think that the study of our own experience can be accomplished through mindfulness and reflection, while the study of other people's experience is to be found in the humanities and in social interaction. The goal with all of this talk of theory of mind is to make it so that theory of mind becomes part of our unconscious decision making apparatus. We need to make it so that theoretical lessons are absorbed into the mind at an unconscious level so that we can simply act those ways intuitively.

I think that the best way to absorb theory into the unconscious is by engaging in deliberate reflection on our own thought and deliberate simulation on other people's thoughts. In other words, we can't make our actions reflect our theoretical values unless we are willing to engage in mindfulness and empathy. Unless we take the time to really think about our own minds and think about other people's minds we won't be able to intuitively enact our moral values.

So we can use theory of mind to equip our minds with a conceptual tool kit that is both scientific and historical. We would learn about simulation theory, about mirror neurons and empathy, about social classifications, about the history of our thought. But that theoretical knowledge about minds isn't any good unless we can somehow transform it into the art of minds. It isn't any help unless it helps us live differently in the social world. We act intuitively in the social world, so we need to use it to transform our intuitive behavior. I think that is best done through reflection on our own experience and through the acquisition of synthetic experience from the humanities.

I'm so tired from starting my new job and from being stressed out and confused. I can't think clearly and want to publish this essay. I'm exploring fruitful things here. I'm articulating good stuff about how theory of mind needs to be reconceptualized both in terms of content and pragmatics. But I don't care to chase this post anymore. I want it to be done. I'll leave my original notes below. I'll stop here.

Original Notes of 9/1/10

- Theoretical ideas and being primed to learn from our own experience

- Mahan and learning from our own experience

- The humanities and synthetic experience

- Sensitivity

- Judgement

Zen and principles as guides to learning from experience. Principles as a means of creativity. These are some questions prompted by GOMM

This is really about the theory of mind. What are the propositions that theory of mind elaborates? And what are there use? What is the body of theory like? What is the use of that body of theory? Theory of mind has to be a zen like project.

Life is an art. Theory of mind is a science. But. Just like Mahan and Clausewitz, you can't have this type of theory for minds. You need a theory of mind that 1. helps you learn from real experience better and 2. helps you gain synthetic experience

Narrative as an Investigatory Tool: History, Science, and the Social Sciences

Now this post is inspired by John Lewis Gaddis's book The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. I finished this book some time in the last week or two and was very impressed by what he had to say. The thing that I liked the most was his ability to show how some twentieth century sciences has started to adopt methods that resemble the historical method.

In particular, he discusses how certain sciences have embraced narrative as a way of exploring possibilities when evidence proves inadequate. The best examples are astronomy, geology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology. None of these disciplines have enough factual data to establish a definite or predictive understanding of how things came to be. Observations of outer space, rock samples, and fossil records do not reveal nearly as much as the observation of the physical or molecular world (physics and chemistry). Gaddis says, instead, these sciences must observe contemporary structures and try to determine the processes that created them. Narrative is the tool that allows these scientists to see process and continuity despite the gaps in their information.

This use of narrative is very similar to historical study, but stands in contrast to chemistry, physics, and the social sciences. First I'll talk about history and how historians utilize narrative. Then I'll run through the sciences and how they engage with narrative, starting with chemistry and physics which don't really need it, and moving to astronomy and paleontology and other sciences that utilize narrative. Last I'll talk about the social sciences and Gaddis's arguments on how they relate to other forms of science. Particularly, Gaddis claims that the social sciences have lost touch with 20th century sciences that explain processes through narrative. Instead, he thinks, the social sciences have stuck to the 19th century model of science that is based on reduction, theorizing, and attempts at prediction.

History and Narrative

As far as I know, narrative has been one of the cornerstone tools of historical method for quite a long time. My general historiographical knowledge isn't super strong, it seems. But, narrative seems indispensable to any modern form of history that claims accuracy.

History's reliance on narrative comes from two aspects of historical study. One is the incomplete nature of historical evidence. Narrative is required to fill in the gaps. Second, history is about the study of humans thoughts and actions, and narrative is the best way to communicate the continuity of experience that we know people feel. So, history uses narrative to expand in the incomplete picture provided by the evidence, and to fully capture the experiences of those we study.

So, why does historical evidence need narrative? Well, historical evidence can be very fragmented. We are left with expressions of thought from past eras and it is the historians job to find the continuity in the time, place, and individuals. A narrative allows historians to build a more complete picture of what people did, what they were thinking when they did it, and what was going on in the world that could make them think that particular way. Narrative allows historical explanation. Narrative itself becomes a way of investigating thoughts and actions from the past.

When I think of historians using evidence to construct narratives of thought and action, I think of R.G. Collingwood. Collingwood is very clear on the role of the imagination in writing history, and in the connection between writing history and writing a novel. He believes that both historians and novelists try to structure a narrative in which characters act in accord with their personalities and their environment. If a character in a novel or a character in a historical narrative acts out of accordance with their times or their general character, their will be faults in the novel or history. The major difference between the two is that historians are trying to write about things that actually happened. Novelists have the liberty of making their characters do whatever they want, but historians have to try to enter other (real) people's minds.

I think Collingwood's treatment of the imagination is very interesting. He discusses something he calls the a priori imagination. By this he means that the narratives are often produced in the mind of a historian or a novelist without their direct construction of the narrative. It is something that comes out naturally, that falls into place on its own. Novelists may say they don't feel like they write the endings to their stories. They simply create characters and the novel has to turn out a certain way based on how they understand those people. The imagination is not deliberately controlled, it is something that unfolds, that produces itself.

Collingwood says it can be much the same with historians. They will read lots of documents or writings produced by a certain person, and the continuity of that persons thought becomes apparent in some deeper part of the mind. The a priori imagination simply unfolds and provides the historian with a narrative that he did not exactly produce on his own.

I'm not sure how this relates to the use of narrative in science exactly, but I have a few ideas. It seems that it would 1. make the imagination a crucial concept for both disciplines, and 2. it implies that the imagination works at some unconscious level. We can't have direct control over all of the things we imagine. We have to sort through them rationally once they have been 'dreamt,' so to speak. In The Principles of Art, which I have only skimmed briefly, Collingwood says the imagination is responsible for creating different worlds that reason can deal with.

So science could perhaps embrace this model. They observe contemporary structures, rock formations, fossils, etc., and they allow an unconscious process of imagination (a priori imagination) create possible processes that could have given rise to these structures. Science should embrace the usefulness of narrative and the unconscious nature of the a priori imagination.

Science and Narrative

Now I want to discuss the sciences as they relate to narrative. First I will discuss the reductionist scientific approach, which doesn't utilize narrative because it has no real need for it. Reductionist science is about reducing reality to its smallest components, and creating models that can predict behavior. Then I'll discuss the ecological scientific approach, which needs narrative and imagination due to the limited nature of the evidence available. An ecological approach focuses on structures and processes. Again, I'm mostly summarizing Gaddis in Landscape.

Reductionist Scientific Approach

Chemistry and physics are the best examples of a reductionist scientific approach that has no need for narrative. With both disciplines reality is reduced down to its smallest possible component, down to the molecular level. In these experiments it is typically clear what the independent variable is. Chemists and physicists typically know what variables they are removing or inserting, and so it is easier to attain results that allow forecasting or prediction.

Attempts at forecast and prediction are perhaps the key difference between reductionist and ecological scientific approaches. Reductionist methods have to attain a state of prediction in order to be correct. Chemists and physicist have to break down reality to the point that they understand it like clockwork, so to speak. An ecological scientific approach, however, cannot break down its evidence into its smallest components, and must rely on imagination and narrative.

Ecological Scientific Approach

The best examples of an ecological scientific approach are astronomy, paleontology, meteorology, and geology. In all of these disciplines scientists must focus on structures and processes. They must observe present day structures (stars, fossils, rocks, etc.) and dry toimagine the processes that could have shaped them. Paleontologists have to examine the incomplete fossil records to determine how and why species evolved as they did. Astronomers have to examine existing cosmic structures to determine how they came to be that way. The subject of these sciences are not timeless. These sciences have to understand dynamic processes that have given rise to things that exist now. Independent and dependent variables are not clear. Everything is interconnected. These scientists have to use their imagination to construct a narrative that can explain contemporary structure. Contemporary structures are clues to the past, but the imagination is indispensable, and narrative is the only way to explore possibilities.

These disciplines, therefore, do not aim at prediction, but of accurate understanding of past processes. This makes these disciplines very akin to history. Both are examining dynamic processes, contingent structures. Both use incomplete evidence to build their narratives of process that can explain structure. Interesting stuff. Now Gaddis uses this to draw some interesting conclusions about the social sciences and how they relate to contemporary science.

The Social Sciences and Narrative

Gaddis's main concern is that the social sciences have not kept up with the diversification of scientific method that took place in the 20th century. Namely, he thinks social scientists have not incorporated the creative use of narrative seen in paleontology, geology, etc.. Moreover, Gaddis thinks that social scientists have stuck to the 19th century positivist scientific model, which aims to predict reality. This is essentially the reductionist/Newtonian model of physics in which perfectly round spheres effect other spheres in predictable ways. It was thought most sciences could obey this model of description and prediction. Sciences concerned with change(ecological view), however, are incapable of predicting the future. There concern is different, they want to understand past change that has created present structures.

By following the reductionist model too closely, Gaddis claims, the social sciences rely too heavily on the theoretical side of their work. They tend to favor the rigidity of theory than accurately represent their subject. Gaddis says many social scientists insist on determining the independent variable in a case study, even though it may be impossible. Over reliance on theory and the notion of an independent variable, the social sciences present theory heavy narrative. Historians and ecological scientists, on the other hand, present theory laden narratives. The narrative is the primary mean of exploration and explanation, and theory is their to augment and enhance the data. Narrative, however, is always the driving force behind history and ecological science.

The social sciences, therefore, need to embrace narrative as a means of exploring reality. Predictive or forecast based theories are not necessarily attainable in the study of human affairs. It is not always clear what is an independent variable, and trying to make that data fit into a theory may lead to a distorted picture of reality. Accurate description of reality must be the most important thing. Describing human reality, however, can't be done on the model of the reductive sciences. We can't break down human interactions into the smallest possible categories because we function beyond the molecular level. We can't determine what the independent variables are in society because everything is far too interconnected. Predictive science cannot guide the social sciences.

Ecological science, though, has some valuable lessons to offer. Examine contemporary structures, use contemporary evidence, and try to determine process. Explore that process through narrative. This isn't very clear. I don't want to draw lots of conclusions right now. But narrative is a fascinating subject. It can tap us into experience, and the social sciences need more of that. Science uses it too, its tight. Didn't know until Gaddis how crucial the imagination was in the sciences. This adds a lot to what Heidi Scott is talking about in her work. I dig it.