Narratives vs. Concepts

[ZSorenson]

I've come to believe that the vast majority of people really do live their lives according to 'social knowledge'. People do what other people do, and accept truth according to what other people believe. Let's call a 'social truth' a 'narrative'. News and history seem to be entirely narrative based. Making news means busting a narrative. It's as if the people, when their precious truth is turned upside down, clamor for some new truth to replace it. That's why you get the Michael Jackson phenomenon (or more appropriately Tiger Woods). People will keep watching and watching and watching a story until a new narrative is cemented in their minds. Moreover, in the absence of factual confirmation, they will do the same for existing narratives. This is why they go to church every week. This is why you have Bush Derangement Syndrome. People have to keeping building and supporting these narratives.

The practical consequences of this shouldn't go unnoticed. For example, as a student in the social sciences, I've observed that most experts tend to absolutely accept narrative, social truth, based view of human nature. From Fareed Zakaria and his commentary on religious rivalry, to microfinance. They talk about tinkering with the world and economic incentives in terms of what people perceive to be good, and rely on social networks to explain the spread of Obesity.

If I had to expalin what a narrative was, I would call it subjective truth. The precise method for creating subjective truth would be to creat 'emotional' concepts. Or in other words, associate perceptual data with emotions. Words, images, etc. become associated with joy, fear, and the like. Nazi doesn't mean the deadly consequences of bad philosophy of a certain type. Nazi means fear and sad. It is therefore natural that this form of knowledge would spread from person to person. For what, in the outside world, could your emotional concepts relate to other than those of other humans? I think ethical hedonism itself can lead to an overreliance on emotions as a standard of truth.

But then what, how has humanity survived? Atlas Shrugged hit the nail on the head with this one. Inevitably, in the mass of people, some process knowledge conceptually. They choose to think. And others learn from them. Nowhere is the burden of Atlas made more clear, than once you understand the role of narratives in popular and cultural knowledge.

My opinion is that most people in most all of history have relied on 'social truth' to get by. It is also my opinion that people could be raised and educated properly to think conceptually. Doing so is the most important thing anyone can do to create a more rational society, I believe. Epistemology might be the most potent science in the world.

[Grames]

Epistemology might be the most potent science in the world.

It is. No need to hedge your bet on that assertion.

[ZSorenson]

It is. No need to hedge your bet on that assertion.

If you consider only Isaac Asimov's first Foundation novel - the quintessential 'shaping the forces of history' story - it really is about knowledge vs. ignorance. There's a lot of hoop-de-doo about psychohistory, or technological knowledge as a static resource, but in the end maybe Asimov inadvertedly is making the point that epistemology shapes history. If you know how to get and keep knowledge, you will succeed over those who don't. Whatever factors contribute to sound epistemology in a society, those drive history.

A very interesting thread up of late talks about language. One idea I gleaned from it was that English is more suited for concepts because it evolved as a reconciliation between different languages with different and foreign ideas. And that English itself as a language was what made possible movements like empiricism - dare I even say the scientific method? I pointed out in another thread that maybe if you pick out places where a similar sort of mixing occured (cultural linguistic), that a society arose that was better suited to produce human values (rational values) - peace, technology, commerce. That when language is locked in, narratives take over. When you have to deal with a thousand competing narratives - reason takes over.

Today, we have the privilege of knowing this. So we can actually open schools that teach sound espistemology to people. Imagine what that would do! If anything, confuse the heck out of social scientists. Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a society of people that voluntarily chose the opitmal outcome of the prisoner's dillemma, for instance?