Edwina ~
Germans and the other groups you listed have all assimilated into American
society, and none of the nationalities or races have proved particularly
intractable. The melting pot is imperfect, but it does a good job of
challenging cultural myths and ancient hatreds that seem to continue
Yes, stereotypes are basic to our identification of 'identity groups' - whether
it be Jews, Italians, Germans, Russians, Chinese. Such distorted and simplistic
images-of-the-other are found among all people. Americans are viewed by
Europeans as...and so on. But the few key variables of behaviour
Having grown up in the 1960s on Manhattan's West Side, when WWII wasn't
so long ago and a German accent was immediately associated to movies and
TV series about Nazis, I admit that I may be unduly predisposed to
regard certain strains of militarism, morality by government fiat, and
'just taking
Post : Semiositis • 1
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/10/semiositis-%e2%80%a2-1/
Date : July 10, 2015 at 5:00 pm
Peircers,
Just a note on some recurring thoughts
that keep coming up in sundry contexts.
Re: Cathy O'Neil ( http://mathbabe.org/ )
At: Profit as Proxy for Value (
http://mathb
Edwina -
I do consider Herr Hitler unique and likely skilled in certain things. It's
just that his uniqueness would not have catapulted him to the top a "normally
functioning" society. He was a man of and for his times. The same could
probably be said of most leaders who gain office during a
In discussing the impact of any individual I do not think luck and chance
can be excluded. I suspect Peirce would agree. I wonder sometimes whether
chance in life is not as pervasive as it clearly is in say the progress of
a spermatozoan to an egg.
Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: http://buff.ly/
No, Helmut, I don't think that the German people 'had more barbaric instincts
than other people'. We are all similar in our capacity for emotional
irrationality and violence. When a societal system of law and order breaks down
for various reasons, i.e., is not providing security, is not function
Tom- I fully agree. I don't 'buy into' what I see as any romanticism of Hitler
that sees his rise as 'special' or 'a mystery'. Or that sees fascism as
dependent on a charismatic leader. And I don't accept the notion that the
German people and their history in itself had anything to do with the r
I agree, that his "abduction-type message is" only "a big part of that success". Tenacity, authority and apriori also are. I wrote, that a false abduction to laypersons of logic can look like a proper conclusion. But not all Germans were too much laypersons to see the lies (eg. Heidegger). Never
I believe that a society's shared beliefs are the outcome of a competitive
evolutionary process, where "the environment" rewards/favors certain traits and
punishes/rejects others. In this analysis Hitler is a "random variation" of
nature, and in some environments he would have been in jail, whi
Edwina, I see the problem of my formulation: I didnt mean "use" in the sense of "apply", but in the sense of "misuse" or "take advantage of": To misuse the elements of logic in a way, that makes a false abduction look like a proper conclusion (for laypersons of logic)- eg. because all agents of
Dostoevsky had three methods of fixing belief that he roundly rejected.
Mystery, miracle and authority. Aside from their adding to Peirce's
rejected methods they evoke the role of religion in menacing freedom. We
should note the evidences of a decline in the reach of organized religion
and be aware
Helmut - if you use the scientific method and lie about your data and
conclusions then, you are NOT using the scientific method.
Hitler used all three fallacious (and common to us all) methods of 'fixing
belief'. The a priori emotional pure visceral appeal to the romantic idealism
of the pure v
Now I am wondering, which of the four methods of fixating belief did Hitler use? According to Ben Novak it is like this, I think: He was tenacious, but that is not the main point. He used authority, but that is not the main point either. Also he took advantage of apriorian ituition and instincts,
The fact that we disagree on the way things are is encouraging as I think
we agree more than you might perceive on many basics. We have had different
life experiences And nothing I suggest ever is more than about a degree or
two removed from things that would contradict. Above all I believe in the
Well, Stephen Rose, you are more 'rosy-viewing' than I am. I don't think that
the scientific method is any more secure now than in the past. Nor do I see a
general reduction in violence or poverty. Instead, I see an increase in a
sense of entitlement (which is utopian in itself!) and sweeping g
Well, I guess I'm going to be a lone dissenter. But Ben N., I think you are
doing an 'abductive' action on us, proposing a hypothesis that is, in my view,
unsubstantiated. You declare, repeatedly, in your work that the dominance of
Hitler's image - and his rise to power - is a 'mystery'. Is it?
And scientific method's hold on the present is more secure than in the past
and there are arguments to suggest that there is a factual basis for
assuming both a general reduction of violence and a reduction of poverty.
Certainly both of these positives have been denoted utopian in the past,
but the
Utopianism, which is an imaginary perfection of life, is basic to the human
imagination. You can see that in our fictional tales - whether from Homer to
fairy tales to romance novels to Batman films to James Bond to our political
and economic ideas of the current era.
But fascism isn't the onl
Dear Ben U:
Thank you for your many compliments to the readability of the dissertation.
I particularly appreciate your likening it to a detective story, for that
is precisely what I was aiming at, although in a treatise rather than a
storyline narrative.
In answer to several of your questions and
All Edwina says is fine. My only caveat is that the tendency of what she
calls utopianism (that assumption needs some proving I think) is not
necessarily in a fascist direction. Fascism requires what she suggests -- a
sort of blindness to reality. It's result is hate, irrationality, mob
behavior an
Ben N., Edwina, list,
Ben N. wrote: "The book involves the application of Peirce's theoretical
structure of abduction to facts" and that thus "the devil is in the
details." To be clear, the book involves the uses of abductive inference
both explicitly by the book itself and in its subject matt
Ben, thanks for your comments.
With regard to the use of such terms as 'mystery, magical, and luck' when
referring to the rise of Hitler, I consider them all similar in that they
suggest some non-factual or illogical causality to his rise. My point is that
such explanations are, of course, not
Dear Edwina:
You have made a number of interesting points. Most of them have been
addressed rather well by Ben Udell. But let me add a few points that I
think will be helpful to many others on the list.
First, it is important that one read the book or dissertation, rather than
for summarizing it
Exactly right. Demagoguery is an old, basic, human tactic of shifting the focus
and blame for real problems from factual reasons - usually caused by the
self/people - to emotional non-causes: existing prejudices, biases, racism,
emotional dreams and hopes etc. All of these emotions are 'rhetoric
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