Can a sophisticated individual rise above ideology?

[coberst]

Can a sophisticated individual rise above ideology?

 

All thought is saturated with egocentric and sociocentric presuppositions. That is, all thought contains highly motivating bias centered in the self or in ideologies such as political, religious, and economic theories. Some individuals are conscious of these internal forces but most people are not.

 

Those individuals who are conscious of these biases within their thinking can try to rid their judgments of that influence. Those who are not conscious, or little conscious of such bias, are bound to display a significant degree of irrational tendencies in their judgments.

 

“Can the intellectual, who is supposed to have a special and perhaps professional concern with truth, escape from or rise above the partiality and distortions of ideology?”

 

An intellectual might be properly defined as those who are primarily or professionally concerned with matters of the mind and the imagination but who are socially non-attached. “The intellectual is thought of not as someone who displays great mental or imaginative ability but as someone who applies those abilities in more general areas such as religion, philosophy and social and political issues. It is the involvement in general and controversy outside of a specialization that is considered as the hallmark of an intellectual; it is a matter of choice of self definition, choice is supreme here.”

 

Even anti-ideological is ideological. If partisanship can be defended servility cannot; many have allowed themselves to become the tools of others.

 

We have moved into an age when the university is no longer an ivory tower and knowledge is king but knowledge has become a commodity and educators have become instruments of power; the university has become a privately owned think-tank.

 

“A profound change in the intellectual community itself is inherent in this development. The largely humanist-oriented, occasionally ideological minded intellectual dissenter , who saw his role largely in terms of proffering social critiques, is rapidly being displaced either by experts and specialist, who become involved in special government undertakings, or by generalist-integrators, who become house-ideologues for those in power, providing overall intellectual integration for disparate actions.”

 

The subordination to power is not just at the individual level but also at the institutional level. Government funds are made available to universities and colleges not for use as they deem fit but for specific government needs. Private industry plays even a larger role in providing funds for educational institutions to perform management and business study. Private industry is not inclined ‘to waste’ money on activities that do not contribute to the bottom line. ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’

 

 

 

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, explains the difficult we have with recognizing and accepting experiences that contradict our anticipations.

 

As Kuhn observed:

“Novelty emerges with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a back drop provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be discovered…Further acquaintance, however, does result of awareness of something wrong…[which] opens a period in which perceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalous has become the anticipated.”

 

He concludes: “What a man sees depends upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.”

 

Kuhn provides us with an experiment performed by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman undertaken to illuminate this human characteristic of seeing only what we are prepared to see.

 

Subjects were shown standard playing cards mixed with the anomalous card a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Subjects repeatedly and erroneously identified the anomalous cards as a six of hearts or a four of spades. Some, even after the experiment was over, displayed confusion and even anger at the experiment. Only after repeated exposures to the cards did the subjects slowly feel something was askew here. Only after forty exposures did the subjects correctly identify the cards.

 

Quotes and ideas from “Knowledge and Belief in Politics” Bhikhu Parekh

[belovelife]

Can a sophisticated individual rise above ideology?

 

 

Those individuals who are conscious of these biases within their thinking can try to rid their judgments of that influence. Those who are not conscious, or little conscious of such bias, are bound to display a significant degree of irrational tendencies in their judgments.

 

“Can the intellectual, who is supposed to have a special and perhaps professional concern with truth, escape from or rise above the partiality and distortions of ideology?”

 

An intellectual might be properly defined as those who are primarily or professionally concerned with matters of the mind and the imagination but who are socially non-attached. “The intellectual is thought of not as someone who displays great mental or imaginative ability but as someone who applies those abilities in more general areas such as religion, philosophy and social and political issues. It is the involvement in general and controversy outside of a specialization that is considered as the hallmark of an intellectual; it is a matter of choice of self definition, choice is supreme here.”

 

-----------------

We have moved into an age when the university is no longer an ivory tower and knowledge is king but knowledge has become a commodity and educators have become instruments of power; the university has become a privately owned think-tank.

 

 

well i think an intellectual also has the ability to stay nuetral

in any given circumstance

as well as give every statment its time

it is a shame when a parent looks at his/her child and doesn't pay attention to what they are saying

 

as far as universities

well i think they are the cornerstone of modern society

where, yes, they do favor research in specific areas defined by economic gain

but also, certain universities are specialized for that porpose

now researching in a specific direction allows for knowledge in that direction

but as an individual in a university, you are free to study what you want

you just need to complete the prescribed courses to get the degree that the individual university structures

so as a degree from one university may be similar to anothers

they are unique among themselves

(depending on the classes)

still, they don't burn students at the stake for asking questions

so i feel we are going in the right direction

[Theory5]

“Can the intellectual, who is supposed to have a special and perhaps professional concern with truth, escape from or rise above the partiality and distortions of ideology?”

 

Theoretically an intellectual who displays independance and critical thinking skills should be able to become free of predijuce and bias created from what they were taught to belive in. However, in real life it is a long, difficult, and never ending journy to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies. To do this the intellectual must not only know to look at an idea from a few different viewpoints, but also to know how people think and function.

 

He concludes: “What a man sees depends upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.”

 

Kuhn provides us with an experiment performed by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman undertaken to illuminate this human characteristic of seeing only what we are prepared to see.

 

Subjects were shown standard playing cards mixed with the anomalous card a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Subjects repeatedly and erroneously identified the anomalous cards as a six of hearts or a four of spades. Some, even after the experiment was over, displayed confusion and even anger at the experiment. Only after repeated exposures to the cards did the subjects slowly feel something was askew here. Only after forty exposures did the subjects correctly identify the cards.

Quotes and ideas from “Knowledge and Belief in Politics” Bhikhu Parekh

 

Simply put; 2+2=5.

The test subjects had the belief that a six of hearts and a four of spades were in the deck, when confronted with a different reality they become confused and afraid. This is the corruptive power of belief, and selective thinking.

[Kriminal99]

TRUTH

 

All power must be deferred to it, for it is the greatest power.

 

Let it be known that no one can plan without it, and thus everyone needs it.

 

Let no one earn a repuation apart from his continually tested ability to provide it.

 

Let no one use any tactic that allows the winning of an argument without it.

 

If the pauper carries it, the king must respect it.

 

Let he who avoids it to preserve his own pride be known as selfish for not advocating and sharing it.

 

Let no one claim to hide it for the benefit of others. Instead, give more of it by convincing others of and enforcing what must be done in light of it. Then have the benefit of all working together to deal with it instead of working inefficiently in ingorance of it.

 

 

Make an example of the man who uses it as an excuse to behave selfishly.

 

 

Make deception the greatest evil for it's ability to cause chaos, and honesty the greatest virtue.

 

Punish those with the greatest power the most for hiding it, for they can cause the greatest damage doing so.

 

Seek disagreement to ensure that you have it.

 

Indoctrinate a whole society with these rules, and corruption is impossible.

[coberst]

but as an individual in a university, you are free to study what you want

 

still, they don't burn students at the stake for asking questions

so i feel we are going in the right direction

 

 

You do indeed set a low bar to challenge the university.

[lawcat]

Boy, this is a loaded question.

 

Sophisticated individual has no ideology. Sophisticated individual, by definition, is concerned about minutae. He/she attaches weight to unimportant and important, and is always questioning in the maze of information. in essence, sophisticated persons procedural logic always returns two competing values. Sophisticated individual has no stability of idea to form ideology for any relevant period of time.

 

A true scientist is sophisticated. His logic does not allow him to conclude anything, except what he derives from formalae. His formulas are his conclusions.

 

Now, an unsophisticated thinker has a method of thought, and discards and retains information based on judgment--his/her procedural method always returns a single value. Once information is processed, unsophisticated thinker trusts that judgment and is bound by the returned values. Unsophisticated thinker can only rise above ideology (or clinging to a particular idea) if there is a cause to change the underlying premises of his/her logical conclusions.

 

A true philosopher is unsophisticated. He does not need scientific method to arrive at conclusion. His logic is sufficient to correctly conclude.

 

However, both the unspohisticated and sophisticated, the scientist and the philosopher, need an empiricist to provide them with the correct premise.

[coberst]

We were born smart enough but we weren’t born intellectually sophisticated enough to handle this high tech world we have invented.

 

What is the difference between “being smart” and “being sophisticated”? I would say that we can use the handyman and his tool box as a good analogy for comprehending this difference. The number and quality of the instruments in a handyman’s tool box is a measure of his smartness and his experience using those tools is a measure of his sophistication.

 

Webster has several statements defining “sophisticated”, the one that rings my bell is “having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world cultivated through wide experience.” Webster goes on to say that “sophistication” is the “process or result of becoming more complex, developed, or subtle”.

 

I would say that a person who is sophisticated in the human sciences might well be sophisticated in many contexts.

 

The sophisticated individual in the human sciences is one with fundamental and critical comprehension in matters of philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, sociology, while being well read in history and perhaps a few other fields that I have not mentioned. Such an individual would have developed an intellectual life within the first ten years after college and have maintained an inquiring mind throughout their life.

 

I would go on to claim that in the human sciences sophistication is more important than it is in the natural sciences. Ingenuity is more important in the natural sciences wherein the work is primarily of solving puzzles rather than that of creating meaning.