File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2000/habermas.0011, message 24


Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 10:51:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Gary D <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: HAB: re: Hab's sociocentrism



--- Stephen Chilton <schilton-AT-d.umn.edu> wrote:
>...what is termed the
> "fallacy of composition":  that there are no emergent properties
> of a collection beyond the properties of its components.  In
> sociological theory this problem is known as the micro-macro
> problem.

Fallacy of composition is a very useful critical notion! I haven't
happened to have heard of the phrase before, but its meaning is very
familiar,in at least the gestaltist sense and the basic hermeneutical
distinction between part / whole. However, accounting for the
character or nature of the gestalt or the whole--accounting for the
emergence--relative to the parts is as difficult an issue as
accounting for mind relative to brain. John Searle says: The mind is
what the brain does. So, to some extent--to *what* extent?--macro is
what micro makes? Sociality is what inter-individuality constitutes?
Searle writes of "the construction of social reality," as a
cognitivist would. So, there's a delicious field of interrelated
issues that can be seen to emerge--a gestalt of ontological
character.


> You (M.P.) will find that your concerns are
> well-founded;  societal development is like individual cognitive /
> moral development, but other dynamics need to be introduced.  But
> at the end of the day, my analysis shows that H.'s use of
> Piagetian theory remains valid.

Following upon this, I'm reminded that Habermas believes that there
is "isomorphism" between one-to-one and group-to-group. In TCA, the
term is 'homology'. I like to keep in mind that this is all a matter
of modelling in scientific inquiry. Emergence in a field is a
discursive or model-theoretic notion, ontogenically based in
lifeworld processes of perception, institutionally based in
archeologies of description, and so on. 

Gary




__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Thousands of Stores.  Millions of Products.  All in one Place.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/


     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005