| Module 2; Are modern cultures any more rational than traditional cultures? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 6 2014, 11:11 PM (147 Views) | |
| estelendur | Aug 6 2014, 11:11 PM Post #1 |
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The first reading for this module is the second half of Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande by E. E. Evans-Pritchard (pp 120-226, starting with chapter IX, on page 64 of the PDF). Some things to think about, less organized than last time as I haven't actually come to any conclusions yet:
Next up we have "Concepts and Society" by Ernest Gellner (which I ended up reading in person rather than in PDF, because Sane). Translations of the French bits:
Tom has helpfully provided a definition of functionalism: 1) Explaining an institution in terms of the way it "functions" to reproduce the social whole. Sometimes on the analogy of the ways organs function to maintain the integrity of an organism. This sense often referred to as structural functionalism. E.g. lineage systems are structures or institutions that function to allocate labor and capital in non-market societies. 2) The idea that one institution tends to vary in a predictable way along with some other institution, so that one may be said to be a "function" of the other in a quasi-mathematical sense. 3) Explaining an institution not in terms of what actors say it is for (manifest function), but in terms of what an outside observer determines are its objective effects (latent function). Thus ritual sacrifice may be said to be for the appeasement of the gods, but an observer sees that they actually reinforce the social solidarity required to maintain the social whole (see 1). He also summarized Gellner's argument, but that would be telling ![]() Questions to think about while reading Gellner:
The final reading, which is technically optional but it's short and you should read it, is the chapter "Belief and Experience" from Sacrifice and Sharing in the Philippine Highlands by Tom Gibson. Some things to think about:
And I promised a bonus silly homework assignment! When you've read the section on oracles, pick something to use as an oracle. It should be small, something you can carry around, maybe a pair of dice. Make up a consistent way to ask it questions. Use it to make decisions. NOTE: This is hard. Why is it hard? |
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| Tom | Aug 7 2014, 10:40 PM Post #2 |
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Just a note on the relevance of my piece to Gellner: it seems to me he makes the assumption that fuzzy concepts can only work to delude the rubes into accepting their domination. I argue that Buid mystical concepts play an essential role in maintaining their "anarchic solidarity" (to use the sexier title of a recent volume on similar societies I co-editied with Kenneth Sillander). |
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| estelendur | Aug 7 2014, 10:57 PM Post #3 |
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Part of me is like, so clearly every reading that is a critical or "optional" text should be accompanied by the question "intuit the intentions of the syllabus designer" so that you can decide whether to be helpful or not. Ok, students, consider that added to your list of things we can potentially discuss! I will start talking to myself in approximately a week if all goes well.
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| estelendur | Aug 26 2014, 09:14 PM Post #4 |
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You might have noticed that the thing I keep getting stuck on in this set of readings is belief and its irrational nature. The Zande have this amazingly complex web of beliefs that are - if Evans-Pritchard is to be believed - almost perfectly self-sustaining. Well, you know who else has that sort of thing? Quite a lot of religions. This is most obvious when you're encountering people who say things like "so-called 'dinosaur' bones were put there by Satan to trick us!" One principle by which one can counter such self-justifying belief systems is Conservation of Expected Evidence. Basically, you have to pick one set of evidences that prove an assertion, and the rest of the evidences must disprove it. The reason I find it so fascinating is that to my knowledge I don't have self-justifying systems of belief that require the world to be other than it actually is, and I have tried to acquire them (and failed). But I probably have self-justifying systems of belief that I am unaware of, you know. Switching gears, it doesn't seem to me that I saw Gellner as assuming that "fuzzy concepts can only work to delude the rubes into accepting their domination," possibly because I had already read about the Buid or possibly because I'm not as cynical as Tom. Incidentally, I have three possible answers for why adopting an oracle is hard, based on the fact that I failed my own silly homework assignment: 1) not used to making decisions that way 2) don't have a lot of weighty decisions to make 3) nobody around me is doing it |
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| Tom | Aug 31 2014, 08:43 PM Post #5 |
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I was not familiar with the concept of CEE, which seems like sound advice to a scientist, but not really workable in everyday life. It seems similar to Popper's demand that scientists state at the outset what kinds of evidence they would regard as falsifying their theories, confirmation not being possible. You might have a look at Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" to see why this doesn't work to explain the history of actually existing science: "all theories float in a sea of anomalies". Kuhn is the one who gave us "normal science", "paradigm shift", "incommensurability", etc. |
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| estelendur | Sep 1 2014, 02:44 AM Post #6 |
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I think that most physical phenomena actually do obey conservation of expected evidence (the reason you haven't heard of that, by the way, is that an inordinate amount on Less Wrong is terminology developed by Eliezer Yudkowsky and his, er, followers?). Like, if I look at the backyard and see that the tomatoes are being chewed, I will conclude that the dog is not scaring away the squirrels; if the tomatoes are not being chewed, the dog is not scaring away the squirrels. I notice this doesn't work very well for, like, emotional phenomena, where legitimately you can have wildly differing explanations for the same behavior, and wildly differing behaviors for the same explanation. She doesn't talk to me because she has a massive crush on me; she talks to me all the time because she has a massive crush on me. I'd suggest that it might be a good standard to adopt for, I don't know, legal purposes, though. If a behavior points toward guilt, would its opposite also point toward guilt? Then it's not actually evidence by itself. It may be the case that humans tailor their interpretations of events to fit pre-determined conclusions, but this is, um, sub-optimal. |
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Ok, students, consider that added to your list of things we can potentially discuss! I will start talking to myself in approximately a week if all goes well.
2:58 PM Jul 11