To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>

From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>

Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:10:03 -0800

Subject: Re: [s-acc] Re: cognitive error

 

Jln:

I have begun to read the passage from Bacon that Andrew recommended, focusing on the sections on "idols". (That passage has too much meat in it to digest all at once!)

I find myself surprised that such a pessimistic view of human thought could be the basis for humanism or for humane treatment.

It sounds like you are reading in to this text something different than was intended. It is not about "humanism" directly, and surely not about "humane treatment." It's about "seek truth from facts" and it aims to expose the main ways people go wrong when they attempt to discover (practical) "truth."

It may be that Bacon takes a more positive view of reason in other sections, I will keep reading. He does differentiate between the "idols of men" and the "ideas of God", which are too subtle for unaided human perception.

This is in no sense an anti-religious tract. It is targeted at what was then called "the scholastic web" [!] which was the way scholastics made erudite conclusions without actually seeking truth from facts. Some of those erudite arguments were faith-based, including notably some of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, but Bacon does NOT attack faith. This is a presentation in "rhetoric" in the classical "trivium" sense of the term.

I am also wondering if the role of mirror neurons in perception (Lakoff) requires a modification of Bacon's conclusions. If empathy is normal and demonstrable, do humans have the limitations Bacon speaks of?

Again, Bacon does not start from a cognitive model, with "empathy" or "no empathy." A "colony of ants" would have to use inductive reason to figure out its truth from its facts, too.

Bacon seems to be saying that the unaided mind is autistic.

"Blaming the mind" is surely one of the characteristics of how today the 'medical model' fails to "seek truth from facts." What Bacon is suggesting is a way to get out of the fix provided by some "idol" like the objectification scheme known as DSM-IV. That we would contrast with "evidence based practices" which is a half-baked way to engage the question of truth that Bacon's argument would pose.

Your thoughts?

 

Andrew