David Rieder wrote:
> Attempting to strike at one heart of the ideology questions, I
> found the following part of Malgosia's statement (yesterday) telling:
> "the notion of 'ideology' for me comes up in the context of asking where
> one's ideas came from..."
> [...]
> - Either one believes we are 'caused' by effects or that we are the cause
> or our understanding of effects - free will. But these are not the
> only two options! One must realize that for all the work Hume did with
> effects and causes he was stuck with the above quote: how we could even
> 'know' what an event was. And the question, once again, which came first,
> us or experiences?
When I talked about "where one's ideas come from", I didn't mean "come
from" in either a classical causal sense, or in the sense of a
logical derivation (which I _think_ is what Hume refers to in the
cited passage). Rather, I was talking about doing intellectual
history. I suppose one could construct intellectual history -- or
history in general -- in terms of strict causation or some axiomatizable
logic. It has and will be done; but I most emphatically would _not_.
We grow up in a certain intellectual atmosphere, and this plays a role
in what we think about and how we think about it. Certain aspects of
this atmosphere are created via the institutions through which the
culture propagates and maintains itself. I call these aspects
"ideology". The institutions can include the family, school, the
economic system, the media, academia, etc. Also, individuals within the
culture frequently become sites of ideology and serve as vehicles for its
propagation. I don't see this picture as involving any strict causality,
absolute necessities, or anything simple at all.
- malgosia
------------------
> Attempting to strike at one heart of the ideology questions, I
> found the following part of Malgosia's statement (yesterday) telling:
> "the notion of 'ideology' for me comes up in the context of asking where
> one's ideas came from..."
> [...]
> - Either one believes we are 'caused' by effects or that we are the cause
> or our understanding of effects - free will. But these are not the
> only two options! One must realize that for all the work Hume did with
> effects and causes he was stuck with the above quote: how we could even
> 'know' what an event was. And the question, once again, which came first,
> us or experiences?
When I talked about "where one's ideas come from", I didn't mean "come
from" in either a classical causal sense, or in the sense of a
logical derivation (which I _think_ is what Hume refers to in the
cited passage). Rather, I was talking about doing intellectual
history. I suppose one could construct intellectual history -- or
history in general -- in terms of strict causation or some axiomatizable
logic. It has and will be done; but I most emphatically would _not_.
We grow up in a certain intellectual atmosphere, and this plays a role
in what we think about and how we think about it. Certain aspects of
this atmosphere are created via the institutions through which the
culture propagates and maintains itself. I call these aspects
"ideology". The institutions can include the family, school, the
economic system, the media, academia, etc. Also, individuals within the
culture frequently become sites of ideology and serve as vehicles for its
propagation. I don't see this picture as involving any strict causality,
absolute necessities, or anything simple at all.
- malgosia
------------------