On 15/08/2011 4:00 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
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.
We actually proposing to create ontological terms?
Where and how?
Ron
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
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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