The responsive order: A new empiricism

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 383-411

  Gendlin, E T ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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EID: 0039702736     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Gendlin, E.T. and Lemke, J., "A Critique of Relativity and Localization," Mathematical Modelling 4 (1983) pp. 61-72. Hereafter CRL.
2. Quine, W.V., Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).
3. Crease, R.P, The Play of Nature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 68-71.
4. Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning (New York: Free Press, Macmillan, 1962); Paperback Edition, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997). Hereafter ECM.
5. See the series of articles in Putnam, H., Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 54-131. For Aristotle the referent of "water" did not include ice and steam which were different elements. But Aristotle's procedure of using heat to convert elements still works, of course. Putnam points out that ways have been found to reconstruct the older referent (for example, common sense "water") from the later more numerous terms. This is also a characteristic of explication. One can look back in many interesting ways which are not available in the forward direction. For example, Hegelian dialectic had no trouble arranging past advances, but a great many attempts have shown that it is nearly useless in further study.
6. The Idealism is not intended today. The "movement" of difference is meant to correct the earlier view that science and discourse have their source in us as subjective "agents." But difference is comparison.
7. But isn't this relation the opposite of Occam's and Kepler's long-standing rule that the explanation with the fewest terms is the truest and most elegant? The two relations can be distinguished: Someone may want to resurrect an older theory, but no one wants to go back to all the simpler versions of 1970. We do not call them all "more elegant." These are only two of many different relations we find, - although each is stated as if it were the only one. We can specify other relations: A sub-sub-detail of the situational intricacy of procedures or findings can generate a new overarching category. A detail may define new generalizations that alter the whole theory which first led to finding that detail. This provides another traceable relationship between later and earlier versions. It also allows us to reopen everything at those junctures when we think about a new empirical detail. A detail may be logically deduced from a set of conceptual patterns. But when it is found empirically, "the same" detail may implicitly contain and lead to further detail which may be inconsistent with that very theory. This is another way we can notice that an empirical detail is not the same thing as one deduced from a theory, although the same proposition may seem to state both. A new formulation may arise through the linkage of deduced detail which - when found empirically, - first "confirms" the theory, and then turns out to contain more than can follow from the theory. Attention to the implicit intricacy of the empirical detail may help one form new concepts.
8. The term "carrying forward" has been derived in other places in my work. But it is characteristic of such terms that they are derived in use. Therefore they can be derived from any fresh use they acquire. Those who know the term find it indispensably coming in a whole range of different contexts in which there is a continuity other than logical deduction. No single conceptual pattern determines its many uses. Language (the use of words) is a responsive order. See "Thinking Beyond Patterns: Body, Language and Situations," in The Presence of Feeling in Thought, ed. B. den Ouden and M. Moen, (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 25-151. Hereafter TBP
9. See chapter IVB, A Process Model, in eight parts, 422 pp., available on http://www. focusing.org/postmod.htm, or as (New York: Focusing Institute Publications, 1996). Hereafter PM.
10. Philosophical Investigations 182, hereafter PI.
11. Seemy "What Happens When Wittgenstein Asks: 'What Happens When . . .?' "Paper from the Conference: "Zur Sprache Kommen: Die Ordnung und das Offene nach Wittgenstein." University of Potsdam 1996.
12. Philosophical Forum 28/3, (1997).
13. See "How Philosophy Cannot Appeal to Experience, and How It Can," in Language Beyond Postmodernism: Saying, Thinking, and Experiencing in Gendlin's Philosophy, ed. D.M. Levin (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997). Hereafter HPC.
14. See also ECM and "Crossing and Dipping: Some Terms for Approaching the Interface Between Natural Understanding and Logical Formation," Minds and Machines 5/4 (1995) 547-560. Hereafter CD.
15. See CD and my "Reply to Mark Johnson," in Language Beyond Postmodernism
16. See "crossing" and "restored implicit governing" in HPC and CD.
17. McKeon, R.P, Freedom and History and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
18. and Thought, Action, and Passion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
19. Cavell, S., "Must We Mean What We Say?" in Ordinary Language, ed. V.C. Chappel (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964).
20. Patrick Heelan has a promising approach. He develops a single two-sided term consisting of the scientific rendering on one side, and its location in the human world on the other. See Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
21. Wittgenstein planned to publish his Tractatus and his Philosophical Investigations under the title: "Philosophical Investigations set against the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus." "Philosophische Untersuchungen der Logisch-philosophischen Abhandlung entgegengestellt." What an elegant way to contrast the two orders by juxtaposing one work on each! This title is discussed in Michael Nedo's volume introducing the new publication of Wittgenstein's works in parallel German and English.
22. See Nedo, M, Introduction, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wiener Ausgabe (Vienna: Springer-Verlag, 1993), p.42.
23. For example, a discourse that employs both orders could provide a context for bioengi-neering. It could define the kinds of research which one can formulate only with both orders. It would also enable the various interests to be represented at an early stage. For example, billions of dollars were invested in bio-engineering as soon as a few applications became probable, before anyone could know what they will really be. Those billions are now a force that makes the new technologies almost unstoppable, but everyone including the investors might have liked to know the issues in advance. On not knowing the uses in advance Rouse, J., Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). A structured discourse would also give the scientists a voice in deciding what is done with their discoveries. For example, one biochemist in a drug company developed a chemical that has the effect of lengthening the time before a cancer spreads. He does not know by how much time. Of course it is the product department that decides about uses. It decided that testing the drug in relation to cancer was too expensive. Since the drug also darkens the skin, it is now used in the company's sun tan lotion. This example does not show that the government requires too many tests, nor that companies are selfish. The department decided rationally within the bounds of what it is empowered to consider. My point is that no other agency is appropriately empowered to bring up other considerations. Such an agency could share the risk of more research and perform other functions, if the science/human interface becomes a special field that develops beyond the current polarization. Currently one side views the market as an extension of evolutionary selection. The other sees only profits for a few corporations. But no general position can cope with these issues. The circumstances differ each time. The Monsanto company's soy beans are engineered to resist only Monsanto's herbicides. In this case it seems easy to decide for whose benefit the market works, but more information along several parameters might change our minds. Cows engineered to give more milk have swollen udders and fall ill more often. In the U.S. the same amount of milk as before will be produced by fewer farms. Many will go out of business. But perhaps in India these cows might be a blessing. My point is that there is a whole field here which the wider order opens. Another issue: Evolutionary selection benefited the given species. Is it wise in the long run to engineer new animals without considering their benefit? For example, a combination cowpig was created a few years ago. It was in constant pain. This "evolution" was not in the interest of the creature. The purpose was an all-lean pig for the market. The farm organizations stopped this development, to keep one company from patenting a "superior" animal and eliminating everyone else who now raises pigs. But the creature's own interest could not enter in. Of course it cannot even be conceptualized in logical terms. But could an interface discipline add something to the market, to approach evolutionary selection? In a similar way, much that matters to us about human beings is not detectable because of the inherent character of our scientific terms. With the responsive order we neither disorganize those, nor reduce everything to them.
24. On my use of Heidegger's "being-in" see "Befindlichkeit, " Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry 16/1-3 (1978/79): pp. 43-71.
25. See my "The Primacy of the Body, Not the Primacy of Perception." Man and World 25/3-4 (1992): 341-353
26. and "A Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Narcissism," in Pathologies of the Modern Self, ed. D. Levin (NY: New York University Press, 1987), pp. 251-304.
27. For psychological and social applications of this philosophy see Focusing, 2nd edition. (New York: Bantam Books, 1981) and http://www.focusing. org.