h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Phred,

Sorry I have taken so long to reply. You seem to have designed a very good questionnaire to prove that our "biographically (situationally) determined situation " explains where we come from when we ask questions.

Schutz's "motivational relevance" is very much a system to help oneto examine one's own motives - which very often one does not understand oneself.

Interesting about your professor. I remeber reading a wonderful book by a philosopher called Hannah Arendt "The authoritarian Personality" She lived in America and was at a well known School of Social thinking which was attached, I think, to the North Western University in Chicago.

Another wonderful book was Maurice Merleau Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception". I am glad that you had inspiring lecturers. The only American liguistic philosoper I remember is Willard van Ormon Quine. I remember writing an essay on how it was impossible to have a square,round cupola for which I received a good mark. Imagine my horror when my darling Dick and I went for a bus ride around the campus of the University of California and there, on the roof of the Sports Pavilion was a square,round,cupola. I was mortified!!

I was very shame-faced and had not investigated the possibility that the these three shapes could not be placed on top of one another.
Idiote!!

Your new blog is looking quite different. and I think I prefer the old setup.!!

Have a successful day on the tennis courts and also making your jewellery. Regards to Mrs. Phred. Apparently the coast line along the old Yugoslavia looks just like the Mediterranean used to look.
I wonder if they eat sea urchins.? I remember my cousins collecting them on the rocks and then cutting them in half and my eating the beautiful wellow iodine-tasting "heart" of the prickly inhabitant of our coastline - with such a beautiful shell.

CheistianrAR1

The New York Times isn't breaking new ground in dehumanising humans, but I still wouldn't learn my morals from a monkey any more than I'd take marriage counseling from a Canadian goose or gray wolf just because they mate for life.

Human interactions are far more complex - for example, you wouldn't have a monkey arguing that not only can he eat, but he should eat - gorge - in the hopes of killing the other monkey, because the Lord created the world and created morality and said to kill infidels and the other monkey is an infidel.

And what would a monkey do when faced with the choice of: rape her or I'll kill him OR choose one person to die with you or I'll choose two? You couldn't even get the concept across. And the Golden Rule is difficult to apply.

Not hurting someone is a concept any toddler can grasp; I'm not startled that sophisticated animals can. But I don't see how it can help us deal with less biological and more man-made situations.

What am I saying? Only that there are too many shades of gray to start slicing things along black-and-white lines in a society that doesn't subscribe to a single morality.


AlsoRan, I'm finding you stuff pretty heavy - gotta go back and read it through carefully before replying.

Phred said:
>> I don't believe in objective morality...unless the voices in my head are considered objective..

Well yes. According to deconstruction, you are believing in an objective something, a 'transcendental signified' called the 'self'. The only way to get beyond this terrible hangup is to believe that the self doesn't exist. Then those voices don't mean anything - they can even be wrong.

Right. Well, I can understand that social background affects how people approach things, but I've always tried to leave the baggage behind before approaching the debating table. For this I've been chastised, but I don't see how anyone can properly see a situation through tinted glasses. Personally, I believe in an objective morality, but I don't feel any pressing need to force it on others, and don't see what justification I could have in doing so.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that a judge has a different perspective of objective morality than a philosophy professor.

"PHRED!"

Who was that?

"PHRED!"

Hello? Is there anybody in there?

"Phred? This is your 'self'"

Right! Who is this really?

"It's your trancendental signified "self", Phred."

Right! Whaddya Want?

"Phred, I want you to build an ark, 40 cubits by 40 cubits by 20 cubits."

Right! What's a cubit?

Dear Leo,

I shall try again. Alfred Schutz called his Pehnomenology which he developed when working with Edmund Husserl, A common sense methodology. I used it when I doing social research in South Africa. Because it is a Descriptive approach and not a Prescriptive approach it is rejected by most theorists.

I shall try and demonstrate why I am trying to argue that it is a worthwhile approach.

Schutz required two conditions which had to be fulfilled if one was following his "common-sense approach".

1. Motivational Relevance
2. Biographically determined situation.

1. Motivational Relevance
1.1 the "in-order-to" motive or overt motive.
1.2 the "because" motive or covert motive.

1.1 The "in-order-to" motive for me , walting to discuss this particular research method, is that it was the one which I used in South Africa when I was employed as seior researcher at the University where I worked.

e.g.
My "in-order-to" motive for attempting to give you an explication, is that I feel that it is such a wonderfully simple approach when researching social solutions.

My "because" motive is that I sincerely believe that it is the only way to approach social situations where there is such a wide diversity of views on practically every current social situation, that it might be of some use in trying to describe current problematic situations.

2. Bigraphically-determined Relevance.

One has to "bracket" one's biographically determined situation and then try to understand the particular social sitation.

I think that I can give an example of this which is basically what convinced me that this example is what convinced me of the tremendous value of this approach.

e.g.
When I was a first year student (at the age of 44) our 500 strong Fiirst year course was asked for volunteers to undertake research in a shanty-town(favella) which was going to be demolished.

I was very sshattered when only five of us offered to help.
Sadly I could not speak the language which most of the shanty dwellers spoke so I asked the person who was organising the research if they could translate the interview schedule.

One of the questions was

What sort of roof do you want on your house?
Five options were given, and then the sixth was

Other......

I was quite shattered when every single one of the 200 inerview schedules which we managed to complete replied with option 6. This meant that the questions had no relevance to the unfortunate squatters who were going to be moved after their shacks (homes) had been demolished.

In the case of the roof question, every single respondent said

We want a roof that does not leak.

None of us, in our privileged exitence had ever experienced this so it would not occur to us to ask that question.
Fortunately the lecturer who had designed the interview schedule had included a sixth option.

Does that make the biographically determined situation os situational relevance clearer.

I particularly remember your posting on the early morning sale that you went to last year. It is something which I had never experienced, but I was able to "understand" what you were writing about because you, perhaps unwittingly - a phenomenological approach. I do not think that it is going be difficult for you to understand now.

Sincerely,

Christiane.

Sorry Leo,

I pressed the wrong "button" before I had finished editing it. So please forgive my spelling/typographical remarks.

sincerely,

Christiane AlsoRan1

Dear friends

Have I freightenied you all off?

I do hope not.

A very busy two days so will probably be off line.

with affection to you all

Christiane.AR1

Christiane,

Thank you for the explanation. You explained phenomenology in very simple and concrete terms. When I looked the philosopy up online it was very abstract and confusing.

It may be a little like the telephone poll that was conducted just before the Dewey-Truman presidential election. The poll showed Dewey should be a clear winner. They forgot that many Democrats couldn't afford telephones.

Interesting to se Hiedegger pop up in there. My favorite existentialist/phenomenologist/nazi..."the nature of man is plastic"

Thanks Phred,

I did not mention Heidigger, but I seem to remember that he was the partner of someone whom I admire very much Hannah Arendt- which always surprised me.

Off to London to morrow. We are going to the V and A where K. is going to an exhibition with his Art Class. I shall go to the Monet exhibition on my own, and my grandson will come and have lunch with us. I am looking forward to it.

Hope Her Ladyship is better.

Regards

CME

That's an interesting connection, Christiane. I see that they are alleged to have been romantically linked before she was forced to flee Germany to France and then to the United States in 1941. However, she did testify on Heidegger's behalf in the post-war de-nazification proceedings.

I gotcha, AlsoRan. One forgets that to a great extent, everything we think - even "objectively" - is the result of our experiences.

Even the voices had to learn Emglish before they could advise me......

Deconstruction on Phred:
Those aren't the voices of a transcendental signified... a TS doesn't exist - they must be the voices of another personality, potentially a Mr. Hyde. DON'T BUILD THAT ARK!

One of the voices identifys himself as Captain Jack Armstrong...Another was once a navigator named Fred Noonan...

Oh dear.

Hi Phred,

They were very romantically linked. She was one of his brightest pupils and she became his mistress whilst still at University. However, she was, to me, the perfecly unbiased person and did not resent people who did not see eye-to-eye with those who did not share her views.

She actually became extremely unpopular amongst the Jewish community in the Sates when she went to Israel to see if she could help the man who was the architect of the Nazi ideology of the perfect pure race.

I studied her extensively as when I was attempting to find a topic for my Ph. D. in the Sociology of Law, I thought that I might do a phenomenological assessment of the population groups in South Africa who were of English extraction and Gemanic extraction. This was in order to see how they "differed" (if indeed they did!!) from the current "white" view of apartheid.

However it was extremely difficult to find a topic because as soon as I found one, the legislation pertaining to my subject would be repealed. Very interesting. Both thrilling and frustrating. (The same thing happened when I chose as my research topic "A phenomenological analysis of the Pass laws in South Africa). The Pass laws were repealed shortly after. To my joy and my problem of finding a topic to study phenominologically. !!

I have always said that one f the reasons why it was so easy to repeal the legislation is because every single discriminatory law in South Africa was legislated. It could therefore be repealed.

What is dangerous is when discrimination is hidden - not legislated but practised. I do not at my age intend to start exploring that aspect, but that is the dangerous one!!

I MUST go and make brunch so that I can watch my favourite programme in peace!.

Have a good weekend.

CME

Very dear Leo,

sorry I am tired now. But I am glad that you have "got me"!!

Please try and read Maurice Merleau Ponty "Phenomenology of Perception". I am sure that it would be enable you to accept phenomonology as being a totally unprejudiced approach to society. I think that is wny I enjoyed your article on the sales so much. It was a phenomenological approach. You just went out and interviewed people and tried to find out why they were doing what they were doing without judging them according to your "biographically determined situation."

Incidentally a lot of Phred's writings are also phenomenological. It is only occasionally that he goes overboard!!(ducks into the kitchen!!)

Have a good weekend

Christiane h