Dear Azamat,
I like the six bulleted items you posted
below, and agree that all are necessary if we are to make ontological
progress. Please continue to think about, and post, your views on these items
in more detail. Also, please review the post Richard sent, and my response,
because I think both conversations are in line, and both are related to the
concept of emergence and self interest.
More focus and concentration are
definitely required, and your six items provide a framework for further
discussion, as does Richard’s discussion of incommensurability.
Thanks,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of AzamatAbdoullaev
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011
12:42 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Self
Interest Ontology going offline
The topic indeed needs more focusing
and concentration but in the context of ontology, keeping away from politics, economics,
history, and all sorts of the mass media's sensations and anecdotes,
however amusing it might be. To proceed, the key things are requested, namely:
- To define the domains
of self-interests as biological reality, cognitive reality, or social
reality.
- To see how the
realities are interrelated by actions and activities.
- To specify the system
of related concepts as selfishness, altruism, and unselfishness;
motivation, need, or drive; morality and immorality; intelligence and
knowledge.
- To identify principal
agents, forces, causes, and behaviors, interactions and relationships
in such realities.
- To perform
the ontological cleaning of the enlightened self-interests and
unenlightened self-interests; people can only act in their own interests,
people consider their needs, desires, and well-being as priorities;
people are obliged to help others, people are obliged to pursue
national interests, etc.
- To study the effects
of greed or unenlightened self-interests or rational selfishness, like the
tragedy of commons, when multiple individuals consulting their own
self-interests destroy the community, quality of life, common causes,
public property, environment, and ecology.
PS: Again, the issues like why the mega-rich
shed crocodile tears over the plight of America are more relevant to social
scientists, psychologists, moralists, politicians, and tax inspectors.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, August 15,
2011 8:45 PM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] Self Interest Ontology going offline
Hi Rich,
I have two comments. One, a meta-observation about keeping the
discussion on topic, and the other about your request about how to move
forward.
You have previously suggested that some on the list object to the
discussion of politics, I can only speak for myself... I don't mind the use of
examples from politics to motivate or ground discussions, what I find
irritating are snippets like what's quoted below:
On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Rich Cooper <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The Democrat justifications are legendary.
Look at the Keynesian policies, which have not worked. Look at QE1, QE2,
the possible QE3 to come, and the onerous taxes on
businesses that are so high, they won't
bring home money made in other countries due to the high tax rates?
Opinions such as this are peppered in your contributions which are,
imo, laden with value judgments that are not related to the matter at hand. I
fail to see how these paragraphs offer anything in terms of working towards a
self-interest ontology. Rather, I see someone asserting unfounded opinion as
fact. Sometimes, when this is becomes rather egregious, someone might chime in
with a correction. To wit, see this piece written by a high-profile, wealthy
individual that directly contradicts your previous opinions masquerading as
fact re income tax ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=2 ).
So, as far as I go, I'm not averse to using political examples for
ontology-related purposed -- I do tire of seeing a particular individual's
political opinions (in my
opinion, demonstrably false, and in fact, adding to a larger environment of
misinformation) fill the list, especially when
the relation to ontology is tenuous. What makes it particularly frustrating is
that for someone else to come in
and correct these statements means that the discussion veers further away from
ontology. Do you see why some people would object to such emails and hence the
pleading to exercise more judgment before sending a note?
[RC] Does anyone
have a suggestion on how to proceed in
light of our
differences?
Comments,
suggestions, constructive ontolog
fragments will be
appreciated.
I can see why you, based in a Randian outlook, would begin with
self-interest. You might want to consider refocusing on the broader idea of
"motivations", whereby self-interest is just one of many types of
motivations that drive human (or organism) action.
I shared two sources which imo are a good grounding points and I'll add
a third.
The updated Maslow based hierarchy provides a good starting point for individual
human motivations [1]. It also explicitly takes into account how people have
differing motivations depending on their physical, social and life-stage
context.
Jonathan Haidt and others work on the origins and variations of
morality, provide another useful avenue into how various values and
value-systems come to drive motivations, especially at the social-group
setting[2].
Neither posits an explicitly political stance, and the vocabulary
deployed in each, can be used to describe what you see as conflicting political
opinions.
George Lakoff, in his book Moral
Politics [3] also provides an interesting perspective for how
the community or social organizations can be viewed. According to Avril and
Richard's language, it is at a slightly higher level of description than an
immediate ontology of self-interest or motivation. However, he does provide
quite explicit mappings for common (American) political stances, which are
derived from a "Nation as Family" metaphor. For example, in
that book he posits that "Conservatives" often employ the
"Strict Father Metaphor" for how a society should function, whereas
"Liberals" prefer a "Nurturant Parent" metaphor. While both
perspectives draw on the same set of metaphors regarding morality and growth,
they order them differently, leading to conflicting policy prescriptions. So
that too might be another avenue to reconcile the apparent differences you
note.
[1] Douglas
T. Kenrick, Vladas Griskevicius, Steven L. Neuberg and Mark Schaller. Renovating the Pyramid of Needs : Contemporary
Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundation. Perspectives on
Psychological Science 2010 5: 292 - http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/144040.pdf
[2] Haidt,
J., & Kesebir, S. (2010). Morality. In
S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.) Handbook of Social Psychology,
5th Edition. Hobeken, NJ: Wiley. Pp. 797-832.
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