Greetings Economists,
CB: Would you elaborate some ?
Doyle,
Well there are familiar names like Bishop Berkeley in England who
commented on or claimed a sort of metaphysical relativity mainly in
terms of moral terms. The concept of parallel lines in Geometry goes
back to the Greeks in terms of theory, but they didn't think of math as
relative. Riemann in the 19th century paved the way by altering the
assumptions about parallel lines to fabricate a mathematical tool
capable of expressing relativistic physics. In terms of this
discussion, physical relativity is usually talked about separate from
‘moral’ relativity which sorts out cognition or Cartesian
‘subjectivity’ from external stuff sensation/perception.
There are some optical illusions that demonstrate how vision is
relative.
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/
supplement1.html#empiricalaspects) Vision being a safe pathway to
explore ‘subjectivity’.
CB: Yes. "Linear" and "non-linear" are well used terms, but here what
is an elaborated or more specified statement of what you mean by
"non-linear" ?
Doyle,
Text is linear, but speech takes advantage of the real time aspects of
consciousness to be used non-linearly. Metaphor is a non-linear
integrative evidence of multiple fields in the brain interacting.
However, metaphor in text loses it’s non-linear features by the
routinization of the words in the grammatical practice of written
text. That’s probably why a more verbal culture (less writing more
speaking to each other) appreciates poetry because of the non-linear
play in language eroded in our culture by constant attention to text.
A movie is linear as normally viewed. When people edit movies (the
software is called non-linear editing) that comes closer to a
non-linear (one puts one clip against another for different meanings)
use of the movie. Which means we perform some work on the movie in a
non-linear context rather than sit passively.
I presume that movies point toward a nexus someday in which pictures
could perform language-like work.
Thanks,
Doyle
PS
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/
Relativism
Relativism is not a single doctrine but a family of views whose common
theme is that some central aspect of experience, thought, evaluation,
or even reality is somehow relative to something else. For example
standards of justification, moral principles or truth are sometimes
said to be relative to language, culture, or biological makeup.
Although relativistic lines of thought often lead to very implausible
conclusions, there is something seductive about them, and they have
captivated a wide range of thinkers from a wide range of traditions.
Relativistic motifs turn up in virtually every area of philosophy. Many
versions of descriptive relativism (described below) bear on issues in
the philosophy of social science concerning the understanding and
interpretation of alien cultures or distant historical epochs. Other
versions bear on issues in the philosophy of mind about mental content.
Still others bear on issues in the philosophy of science about
conceptual change and incommensurability.
And Paul Feyerabend:
Given appropriate stimuli, but different systems of classification
(different ‘mental sets’), our perceptual apparatus may produce
perceptual objects which cannot be easily compared (1993, p. 166)
