RoR: Forum

Can anyone name any "school" of thought that has not fallen into this trap in some way?

A "disciple" is one who follows a "discipline" and not just a "master." By its nature, a discipline allows some statements as "true" and disallows others as "false." This applies to the hard sciences easily and the soft sciences not so easily, again by their natures. Even with (1) reality as the standard of truth and falsehood by the correspondence principle and (2) reason based on observation coupled with the law of identity as the method for knowing that reality, controversies erupt and disagreements grow heated. Even well-conducted experiments lead to arguments about how to interpret their results.

Merlin, could you please elucidate what you wanted us to gain from sharing this quote?

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 6/20, 7:02am)

Post 1

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 10:49am

"Can anyone name any 'school' of thought that has not fallen into this trap in some way?"

To the contrary, Psychology fits that description to 'T' - There are Behaviorists, Freudians, Jungians, etc. (about 400 different schools each with at least one significant idea they have organized around).

But I would say that quote only captures half of the dynamic... the negative side of that process - at least the way it is in Psychology.

First there is an innovator, say Freud, who advances or begins a science or discipline or a brand new area in an existing discipline. Students and practitioners who see value in that innovation come together to form the new school and they expand on the new principles, and work out the applications, explore the corollaries, and offer corrections and improvements. All good stuff (assuming there is some worth in the basic innovation to start with). Competition between ideas arise when another school arises with conflicting views, and this can be good as well, as long as there is a reality-based standard that will eventually resolve differences in favor of the best ideas.

There will arise, from the disciples perhaps, someone who breaks off from the school and forms his own school (like Jung did when he broke with the Freudians). This branching is a process by which we evolve a tree structure of knowledge/theory and gives us more alternatives to compare one, against the other, to find the best fit to reality (or to provide more food for thought).

I don't think we see these values as clearly - they should be valuable parts of the process of a "school" of thought and of its disciples. Maybe, in part, this is because of the government's involvement in both our educational system and in the world of research. That involvement makes for an unfair, and out of balance system such that competition is skewed in favor of the tactic of exclusion, ridicule, etc., as tactics by those who happen to constitute the main-stream. Kind of like king of the hill, where if you get on top, the winning strategy is to push down anyone who is getting close to the top - before they are on equal footing, as opposed to level-ground, free market competition which impels people to attract customers/adherents by offering value/intelligibility.

Post 2

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 1:10pm

Merlin, could you please elucidate what you wanted us to gain from sharing this quote?

I posted it for its truth value.

But I would say that quote only captures half of the dynamic... the negative side of that process - at least the way it is in Psychology.

I didn't see it as only negative. It includes "rightly or wrongly."

Post 3

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 3:25pm

Merlin, maybe I'm missing something here that was in the context the quote was pulled from, but I think you are misreading the phrase: "rightly or wrongly."

"Notoriously, disciples tend to narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard---rightly or wrongly---as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose 'school' they are working."

"Notoriously" - that kind of give you an hint of where they are coming from - that they are NOT holding this up as an example of a neutral statement of the entire process of knowledge gathering via disciples of a 'school' - of both sides of the issue. But rather of what will be an example not to be followed. The use of 'disciple' and 'master' which are pejorative is another clue.

"...narrow their minds," and accept only what is sanctioned by by the 'master' - those are NOT good things - another clue.

Look grammatically at what "rightly or wrongly" modifies. It modifies the "regarding" being performed by the disciples. What are the disciples regarding? Not the content of an idea, but the question of did the master sanction something or not. NOT about the truth about the statements. In other words, if you diagrammed the sentence, it would show the disciples only accepting what they think the master supports even if they misunderstand what he said. E.g., Jesus says turn the other cheek, and some Christian thinks he meant, "Moon your enemy," and accepts that even though he is wrong about what Jesus said. Right or wrong about the master said, the disciple accepts what is thought to have been said.

But that is kind of stupid. I suspect the author intended a different meaning. I think he meant to say that the disciples accept only what the master sanctions, even if what the master sanctioned was wrong.

But that doesn't matter. Both of those interpetations are examples of faith over reason by the disciples. And that would mean both interpretations are negative in the sense I meant.

Did you see anything in that quote that spoke to the aspects of the dynamic that I mentioned - innovation, competition between ideas, addition of new elements/theories that can be explored, building hierarchical structures, etc.?

Post 4

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 5:07pm

Steve, I had a different interpretation. I took "rightly or wrongly" to be Toulmin's own assessment of the master's ideas (with the advantage of hindsight).

Also, I did not interpret "notoriously" as negatively as you seemed to. Here "notorious" has two meanings. The first doesn't include "unfavorably." Also, here the first four synonyms of "notoriously" (particularly, notably, spectacularly, especially) aren't negative either. I interpreted Toulmin's use to be synonymous with "notably." Lastly, Toulmin is English, not American, which may be a factor.

The next sentence in the book is: "Historically speaking, this failing can be advantageous, since it enables a major scientist like Newton to exert his magisterial authority, and so provide guidelines within which lesser men are expediently confined" (my bold).

Post 5

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 6:45pm

I agree with Steve. That quote sure sounds negative to me. " . . . disciples tend to narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard---rightly or wrongly---as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose 'school' they are working."

That, I submit, is a perfect description of dogmatism.

Post 6

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 6:48pm

Merlin,

We disagree. I agree with Bill's observations.

I only wanted to say that the process of forming schools of thought, even when a particular school is made of a great deal of questionable principles can be part of a process that evolves higher quality knowledge over time.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 6/20, 6:50pm)

Post 7

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 7:46pm

So do you guys believe that 'disciples who narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose school they are working' don't exist?

Post 8

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 8:04pm

I agree with the Bill/Steve school of thought on this matter.

:-)

Ed

Post 9

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 8:24pm

"So do you guys believe that 'disciples who narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose school they are working' don't exist?"

Not me. I think you find lots of that kind of disciple in lots of disciplines. They exist.

Post 10

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 4:15am

Steve wrote (post 3):

Look grammatically at what "rightly or wrongly" modifies. It modifies the "regarding" being performed by the disciples. What are the disciples regarding? Not the content of an idea, but the question of did the master sanction something or not.

This doesn't make sense to me. If such disciples took whatever the master says is right, then "rightly or wrongly" being about their regarding it does not fit.

I have no desire to continue this. I'm staying with my interpretation. I have read about 1/3rd of the book so far and know the context of the sentence.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 6/21, 10:36am)

Post 11

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 5:55am

Since 'schools of psychology' were mentioned, how does this pare with the biocentric psychology school - or is there such?

Post 12

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 11:04am

Merlin, adding your second quote, it reads:

Notoriously, disciples tend to narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard---rightly or wrongly---as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose 'school' they are working. Historically speaking, this failing can be advantageous, since it enables a major scientist like Newton to exert his magisterial authority, and so provide guidelines within which lesser men are expediently confined.

So, the author is not just describing, but negatively judging, the disciples. Their "horse-with-blinders-on" behavior, the author says, is a failing -- a failing that can sometimes (as in the case of Newton) work out for the best.

Ed

Post 13

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 12:24pm

Ed, so what? I haven't claimed there is "no negativity" in the quote.

Post 14

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 1:15pm

Robert,

"Since 'schools of psychology' were mentioned, how does this pare with the biocentric psychology school - or is there such?"

I am a 'disciple' of the Biocentric school of psychology. But I'm not sure if it should be called a "school" since it isn't mentioned as such, taught by anyone other than Nathaniel (that I know of). And he doesn't even use the name "Biocentric" any more - he just refers to what he teaches as "psychology."

Nathaniel wasn't interested in promoting a school of thought in that way. (Maybe because of his experience with NBI and the break-up with Rand, he appeared to avoid the creation of a school while none-the-less promoting his ideas. He did teach for a while at UCLA and has held workshops for therapists - but never to create a 'school' that I could see.)

Long ago, he went head-to-head in debates with Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET). Biocentric psychology is clearly superior as a theory when compared to RET in explaining human motivation and development. And I'm sure that using the techniques Branden developed, if measured in a research project against the techniques used in RET, Nathaniel's techniques would provide much, much more effective treatments. And Nathaniel is more personable, more persuasive, and more likable than Ellis (I only met Ellis once, but saw him speak a number of times). Yet RET is well recognized as a school and biocentric isn't. RET evolved into most of what is taught in the universities today as Cognitive or Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology. Nathaniel's work has had more effect (before him, self-esteem was not even mentioned in the field of psychology), and his work will continue to have more effect because of the inescapable fact that self-esteem is at the core of human motivation.

I can only conclude that many of the schools of psychology are probably the result of a lot of work to create a school as opposed to working on understanding psychology.

As time passes, most of the schools of psychology will wither away - and exist mostly only as history - because of the near monopoly of the cognitive approaches taught at the universities and the licensing requirements which are set and maintained by a partnership between the universities and the government.

Post 15

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - 5:35pm

Merlin,

It's certainly word-mincing, but when Toulmin says "rightly or wrongly" he appears to mean that disciples may wrongly attribute a master's sanction of something (i.e., mistakenly accept an interpretation by falsely thinking the master would have sanctioned it) -- not that it could be either right or wrong to be dogmatic in the first place. So, when Steve said:

But I would say that quote only captures half of the dynamic... the negative side of that process - at least the way it is in Psychology.

... I think Steve meant that sometimes it can be right to be dogmatic. [please correct me if I'm wrong, Steve] One reason that it can be right to be dogmatic is when you need to turn down the volume of multitudinous and arbitrary claims. Ayn Rand did this very well. She could discount a prominent thinker's whole system of thought by examining just one or a few aspects (i.e., without actually reading everything that that thinker wrote).

By holding strong and firm to a few axioms and rejecting anything which contradicts those axioms, at least 20% (if not 40%) of all philosophic thought is immediately taken off of the table (rejected outright, without further investigation). Limiting yourself to axioms -- and all that doesn't contradict axioms -- is a form of dogmatism. It is unbending and unwavering. Yet it is good.

Ed

Post 16

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - 6:11pm

Ed: "...I think Steve meant that sometimes it can be right to be dogmatic. [please correct me if I'm wrong, Steve] One reason that it can be right to be dogmatic is when you need to turn down the volume of multitudinous and arbitrary claims. Ayn Rand did this very well. She could discount a prominent thinker's whole system of thought by examining just one or a few aspects (i.e., without actually reading everything that that thinker wrote)."

I personally wouldn't use the word "dogmatic", Ed, to describe Rand's methods. For one, this is what she had to say about that:

PLAYBOY: If widely accepted, couldn�t Objectivism harden into a dogma?

RAND: No. I have found that Objectivism is its own protection against people who might attempt to use it as a dogma. Since Objectivism requires the use of one�s mind, those who attempt to take broad principles and apply them unthinkingly and indiscriminately to the concretes of their own existence find that it cannot be done. They are then compelled either to reject Objectivism or to apply it. When I say apply, I mean that they have to use their own mind, their own thinking, in order to know how to apply Objectivist principles to the specific problems of their own lives.

A passage from Russian Radical echoes what your wrote, and better describes her method as minimalist:

"Rand's approach to the ontological foundations of philosophy was minimalist. In fact, beyond the general axiomatic proposition of existence, Rand refused-on principle-to commit herself to any a priori judgements about the ultimate constituents of reality. She believed that epistemology was the crux of philosophy because it related to the means of knowledge and was the base of all special sciences. Rand herself considered ontology and epistemology inseparable, and argued that each therefore implied the other...Thus her axioms serve as the foundation for her theories both of being and knowing."

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 6/22, 6:12pm)

Post 17

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - 6:33pm

Ed,

You wrote, "I think Steve meant that sometimes it can be right to be dogmatic. "

Nope. Dogmatism is defined as "The tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or a willingness to consider other views." (Never good).

I agree with Joe and don't think Rand was dogmatic - certainly not according to the definition above.

Given my understanding of 'dogmatic,' I was coming from this perspective:

Dogmatism is alway wrong as a process,
It is usually found supporting bad principles,
But, it can also be seen in the way some people support good principles in good schools.

I was saying that a person, say Freud, starts a school. And disciples come out and begin expanding and supporting the school and applying its principles. Some were very dogmatic, some were a little dogmatic but just on some of the principles, and some were not dogmatic at all.
---------------

My post wasn't about the dogmatism, but the fact that schools are a normal way for collections of ideas to compete and for us to correct them and build upon our hierarchy of knowledge.

The very existence of a school causes others to think about it - it is a kind of organized, on-going advocacy for a set of principles. It will often trigger the reaction of creating a different school based upon different principles. This is the way we build a competing sets of ideas, and evolve a hierarchy of knowledge. Over time, some schools get tossed if they are too far from reality, and if they have a beneficial relationship to reality then they are kept, and they get corrected and improved.

If some people are dogmatic part of the time, that just makes the process a little less effective - but I wasn't addressing that.

The context of my answer was as a reply to the question Luke put forth, "Can anyone name any 'school' of thought that has not fallen into this trap?" [where the "trap" referred to was the set of negative things in the quote]

So, I was saying that the formation of schools has a good side.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 6/22, 6:37pm)

Post 18

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - 7:19pm

Steve, since you mentioned Freud, I'm going to put his exact quote out there, to demonstrate just howundogmatic Rand was, in comparison:

"My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark." "A bulwark against what?" asked Jung in astonishment. Freud replied, "Against the black tide of mud, the occultism". In commenting on this episode, Jung said, "First of all it was the words 'bulwark' and 'dogma' that alarmed me; for a dogma, that is to say, an undisputable confession of faith, is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and far all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judgment; only with a personal power drive. This was the only thing that struck me at the heart of our friendship. I knew that I would never be able to accept such an attitude." (Hall and Lindzey, p. xxiii)

Occult issues aside, could one imagine Rand ever saying such a thing? (Okay, there are plenty who could imagine it...but I've never seen anything from her pen, at least...) It certainly clashes with the Playboy interview statement...

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 6/22, 7:20pm)

Post 19

Friday, June 24, 2011 - 4:09pm