GRGR(6) Discussion Opener

[Paul Mackin]

Items 26 (virtues or lack thereof of analysis) and 27 (gone about
as far as we can go with cause and effect) got me to thinking.

Seems like there is an irresistable impulse to set up binary
opposition between Pointsman and Mexico. Is there any way to 
undermine this? Maybe take the literal "meaning" out of it.

Pointsman as behaviorist and animal experimenter (as well
as his general approach to things) makes him a perfect standin
for unfreedom.  Pretty intrusive guy.

But isn't Mexico's probabalistic approach (and the importance it takes on in modern physics} totally problematic as a standin for freedom?

Might it not well be seen as gross  overemphasis on the MICRO level? The thing of it is, attempts to control destiny and people are invariable made at the MACRO level. Reasonable probablities of success are all that is ever required..

(Also, one might note,  Mexico's intolerance of Jessica's flights of fancy seems pretty manipulative in its own right. Of course it's still early in the book.)

But to continue with the distinction between micro and macro levels
(forgive the binary thinking), Pointsman's preference for one or zero outcomes when looked at from the viewpoint of neurology is
also a strictly MICRO phenomenon. I refer to the all-or-nothing principle
of neuron (single cell) response. The  conditioned reflex  (the MACRO event), on the other hand, may be  GRADUATED as much as Mexico's probablities.

What I'm getting at is this. Is some little trick being played on us?. It wouldn't be the only time the fundamental consturcts of our understanding of the world are rearranged either for comic or "serious" effect. (Something like those sound shadows we encounter toward the end of the book.)

	
Need to give this more thought but will throw it out anyway.

				P.



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P. 88

26) Mexico says to Pointsman:  "...but I wonder if you people aren't a 
    bit too -- well, strong, on the virtues of analysis.  I mean, once
    you've taken it all apart, fine, I'll be the first to applaud your
    industry.  But other than a lot of bits and pieces lying about, what
    have *you* said?"
    
    This reminds me of a passage in another book, a passage which has
    stuck with me for quite sometime:

    ...reflection is not only crucial to human experiencing (by raising
    it above passive reception of the melee of sense data to coherence
    and meaning) but also to the world that we experience.  That is not
    a world we find; it is a world we make.  The romantic attempt to
    reach beyond it to a more primitive, unshaped reality is self-defeat-
    ing.  It cannot uncover "the real world."  It can only destroy the
    one real world there is, the world we mold by our experience, and
    reduce us to the poverty of raw material and raw act.  Destruction, 
    finally, is never a creative act, because reflection in the broadest
    sense does not distort a pure reality but makes it.  Very metaphoric-
    ally stated, reality os not a peach which under a coat of skin and 
    soft flesh hides a true, hard core.  It is an onion, made up of,
    rather than hidden by, its skins.  If we peel long enough, we will
    not reach the true, hard core.  Instead we will end up weeping over
    a meaningless handfull of onion skins.

    Erazim Kohak
    Idea & Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology
    in Ideas I

    Is this what we have going on here, a debate between phenomenology
    and analytic philosophy?  Or a debate between Pointsman's binarism
    and Mexico's statistics?  Or both?

P. 89

27) Mexico: "...but there's a feeling about that cause-and-effect may 
    have been taken as far as it will go.  That for science to carry on
    at all, it must look for a less narrow, a less...sterile set of
    assumptions."
    
    Are we here referring to the onset of quantum mechanics, a statis-
    tical enterprise?