Maggie C. writes: >> That magic is reality and physical reality is a manifestation of magic. Poisonally, I think there may be some truth in this. After all, how much magic and how much reality exists in economic theory as taught in most universities? I also think we make physical reality by our beliefs. If we believe that pollution will not take over the world, we will continue to pollute....<< I think that the answer here is in the distinction I made before between the practical social construction of reality and the epistemological social construction of reality. Yes, there are self-fulfilling prophecies, where thinking that the stock market is going to crash (or that women are fragile or pollution is inevitable) actually causes the market to crash, women not to work out or buy guns, or pollution to prevail, as we act on our thinking. This is practical: our conceptions of reality, put into practice now, help create future reality. But what's controversial is the (idealist) view that our conceptions of reality actually affect reality without our acting on those conceptions. Barkley R. writes: >> There really is a profound mystery about the nature of reality that none of the contestants in this discussion can resolve. On the one hand, at the sub-atomic particle level, we have this ephemeral quantum world where things really are very strange and apparently even "subjectivized" in some deep way...<< It's been a long (looooong) time since I studied quantum physics as an undergraduate in college. But if I remember correctly, the problem is that it's not our _perception_ that makes the quantum world "ephemeral," spawning the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the like. (The H.U.P. indicates that the position and momentum of an electron cannot be determined simultaneously.) Rather, it's the _activity_ of measurement that interferes with our ability to measure both momentum & position. I know that there are other interpretations of the H.U.P., but this is the only one that makes sense to me. IMHO, this says that one can't always draw the fine line (posited above) between perception of an object of study and involvement with that object. This also applies in sociology; it's called the participant-observer problem. However, though the line can't always be drawn in practice, often it can be. (I can study the macroeconomy of the US without affecting it.) Further, the distinction makes sense as a theoretical first step. That step indicates that it's not the perception as much as the involvement that affects the nature of the object of study. In addition, one's perceptions -- even of the physical world -- are determined by one's societal and natural environments, one's social status, and one's biography and biology. But that doesn't mean that this environment is _same as_ one's perception. It also doesn't mean that one can't (once and awhile) get beyond one's training and come to a more complete, less ideological, vision. Consciuousness of the forces that encourage ideology can help here. Ajit S. writes>>... On the other hand a phenomenologist epistimology would suggest that we extend the feeling of personal space to the whole enviorenment. In this case, the subject object dichotomy breaks down. The whole enviorenment becomes part of our body....<< I didn't know that anyone was arguing that there was a subject/object _dichotomy_ (i.e., a hard-and-fast and permanent distinction, as between the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil in some religions). Rather, there's a dynamic interaction, a dialectic, between subject and object. I transform the world as it transforms me. And that dialectic might be unequal, with one part dominating the other. The whole environment might be seen as part of one's body, just as one's body is part of the environment. But the natural environment affects me more than I (as an individual) affect the environment. (If one looks instead at the dialectic between the natural environment and humanity as a whole, then the balance swings toward humanity having a big (negative) impact on the natural environment.) I don't understand the appeal of phenomenology, by the way. Isn't phenomenology merely descriptive? (I'm in favor of description, of course, but is it really enough?) In a different note, Ajit says: >>Doug, your kind of thinking as been in power for a few hundered years now. And we all know what it has done to the world. ... << This is very unhelpful (please stop the ad hominem argumentation). Doug has already answered this, but I want to add the following points. It might be said that modernist ideology has dominated the world for a few hundred years (and I'm assuming that it's that ideology to which Ajit is referring). But it's a bourgeois modernism. Doug professes a _socialist_ modernism, if it is indeed a modernism. That kind of modernism hasn't been dominant. It's not just the ideology that is crucial. It's also the social structure -- in our case, capitalism -- and the way in which power is distributed and used. Frankly, I don't think it matters whether the dominant class is modernist, postmodernist, classicist, mystic, or even socialist. That dominant class will fight to the death to preserve its privileges. In a capitalist system, they will also be pushed by the coercive force of competition to seek profits by any means necessary. (I'll leave the dynamics of a bureaucratic-socialist system to another day.) in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
