Structures and Systems
Mar 8th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 8 Comments |
After trying to read God’s Politics — and especially given my continued insistence that “groups” don’t exist — I’ve decided it’s time for me to provide my account of what “structures” or “systems” are (as when people talk about “systematic injustice” or “oppressive structures”).
Here it is:
Definition of a “Structure” or “System”
(a) A structure or system is simply a decision or choice — or set of decisions or choices — that multiple persons each and all make (e.g., decisions or choices to “take,” “frame,” or “look at” something in a certain way, to believe a certain thing, to act a certain way, to try to achieve something, etc.).
(b) Usually, however, a structure or system is a decision/choice (set) that multiple people take as having been made for them.
(c) In other words, a structure or system is usually a decision/choice (set) that multiple persons do not simply make, but instead decide/choose to go along with after they come across it as having already been made by someone else.
(d) In other words, a structure or system is usually a decision/choice (set) to which multiple persons consent, rather than fully making (i.e., by taking responsibility for or “owning up to” the decision/choice).
I say “set” just so I don’t have to say, “a decision or choice, or multiple decisions or choices” over and over again.
There will be more, but that’s enough for now.
Interesting stuff. I find myself wondering, though: why not apply your a definition to the term “group”… In other words, what’s the difference between a group on the one hand and a structure/system on the other?
I think one could do something similar with “groups.” People form a group when they all make the same decision or set of decisions.
This reminds me of Locke’s idea of the body politic. Unless each person in a body politic allows the decision of the majority to “conclude” her or him, Locke says, there is no group.
Everyone in the group has to make the same decisions about how to act, or else there is no group.
So, since “group” is a little more concrete than “system” or “structure,” I think I’d have to say:
Or:
The group is nothing above and beyond the persons, however.
I haven’t begun reading E. Husserl on number itself, which you recommended I read, but I have read Dallas Willard’s fine intro to it. You must be channeling Husserl. He defines number in a similar vein to your group and structure or system. Willard claims that the late Husserl claims that the number 3 is nothing more or less than “something and something and something.” You phenomenologists certainly try to be Ockhamites when it comes to how hard it is for you to welcome a multiplicity of entities.
It seems to me so far that Husserl is “one of those dreaded proponent of psycholgism” (as you call it).
It also seems to me so far that Phenomenology is one of those “dreaded totalizing” (as I call it) philosophies. Calvinism is irrefutable because if you refute it, you were merely predestined to do so. Freudianism is irrefutable because if you refute it, you are merely responding to your subconscious urges in doing so. Phenomenology is irrefutable because if you refute it, you are merely failing to see the very lens through which everything else is seen clearly, without giving credit to the lens.
I haven’t learned yet how Joe doing Phenomenology comes out with the same answers as Sue doing Phenomenology. Or rather, I haven’t learned how Joe and Sue can negotiate any agreements about their words, since words too are just sensoria. But I won’t give up trying to learn where the Phenomenological fulcrum is to move the earth of philosophy, if one does not have a primary experience of God.
I just googled about that, and apparently Husserl was a Christian believer (this link requires reading the page from a computer at an institution that subscribes to SpringerLink’s on-line journals). But not all Phenomenologists are theists, so the philosophy for all folks can’t appeal to the Grundlagen of some folks. (All good philosophers throw German around, therefore all people who throw German around are good philosophers. Not! :-) )
If you want Husserl’s “refutation” of psychologism, that’s in the “Prolegomena” to his Logical Investigations, which Husserl wrote after Philosophy of Arithmetic. Consequently, I wouldn’t be surprised if one could find some psychologistic tendencies in PA, since it’s an earlier text. Willard does his absolute best to read PA as non-psychologistic, however. And Husserl continued to cite it favorably even after his refutation of psychologism. So he thought it was “salvageable,” at least.
Multiplicities, for Husserl in PA, are “one and one and one etc.,” but not numbers (Chapter 4, pp. 83-84). Numbers are the concepts that correspond to each possible kind of multiplicity (Chapter 4, p. 85). And through certain mental activities like counting and comparison, you can actually intuit those concepts (the numbers), themselves. Numbers are ideal objects (objects not bound to any place or time), which are independent of the human mind.
Likewise, Husserl believed that meanings are ideal objects, that propositions are ideal objects, etc. He believes you can intuit ideal objects (e.g., universals and essences). And he believes that states of affairs exist (e.g., the card’s being on the table), not just the members of the states of affairs. And he believes that the structures of objects (structures that Hume and Kant would say are imposed by the mind) actually exist in the objects themselves.
So Husserl and Ockham wouldn’t have gotten along very well. Husserl is too Platonic and Aristotelian.
I’m unclear on what you mean by phenomenology’s being irrefutable. Phenomenology is supposedly the study of the structures of experience (i.e., the structures of how the world is and must be encountered). If one thinks Husserl described experience incorrectly, all one has to do is provide a better description of experience than he did, and ask people to choose which of the two descriptions better fits their experience.
(Hence Heidegger’s Being and Time, Levinas’s Totality and Infinity, and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.)
Joe and Sue settle their arguments by appealing to experience (=the way the world is an must be encountered). The fundamental assumption of phenomenology is that we all experience the same world, and that the world can only be experienced in certain ways. (E.g., you can’t experience colors with your tongue, or texture with your ears, or other people without using your mind and seeing them as having minds like your own, or numbers without engaging in certain mathematical activities, etc.)
Oh, and I forgot to add:
What’s really Husserlian about my description of structures and systems is my claim that multiple people can make the same decision.
This makes decisions ideal objects (since one and the same decision can be made by different people at different times in different places).
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