Re: Misunderstanding Bateson

From: Albert Wagner (albertwagner_at_cox.net)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 11:07:17 -0600

Daryl McCullough wrote:
> Albert Wagner says...
>
>
>>No. You haven't. And 'infinite' is not a property of anything,
>>much less sets. I posted this earlier today but perhaps you
>>missed it:
>>
>>In _MIND AND NATURE: A Necessary Unity_ Gregory Bateson describes
>>this faulty logic:
>>---------------------------------------
>>A common form of empty explanation is the appeal to what I have
>>called "dormitive principles", borrowing the word dormitive from
>>Molière. There is a coda in dog Latin to Molière's Le Malade
>>Imaginaire, and in this coda, we see on the stage a medieval oral
>>doctoral examination. The examiners ask the candidate why opium
>>puts people to sleep. The candidate triumphantly answers,
>>"Because, learned doctors, it contains a dormitive principle."
>>
>>We can imagine the candidate spending the rest of his life
>>fractionating opium in a biochemistry lab and successively
>>identifying in which fraction the so-called dormitive principle
>>remained.
>>
>>A better answer to the doctors' question would involve, not the
>>opium alone, but a relationship between the opium and the people.
>>In other words, the dormitive explanation actually falsifies the
>>true facts of the case but what is, I believe, important is that
>>dormitive explanations still permit abduction. Having enunciated
>>a generality that opium contains a dormitive principle, it is
>>then possible to use this type of phrasing for a very large
>>number of other phenomena. We can say, for example, that
>>adrenalin contains an enlivening principle and reserpine a
>>tranquilizing principle. This will give us, albeit inaccurately
>>and epistemologically unacceptably, handles with which to grab at
>>a very large number of phenomena that appear to be formally
>>comparable. And, indeed, they are formally comparable to this
>>extent, that invoking a principle inside one component is in fact
>>the error that is made in every one of these cases.
>>-----------------------------------------
>
>
> Albert is misunderstanding Bateson. The point of that article is
> *not* that there is anything wrong with defining the phrase
> "containing a dormative principle" to mean "having the ability
> to put someone to sleep". The point of the article is that
> dormative principle is not a *cause* of morphine's ability to
> put someone to sleep. There is no information conveyed by saying
> "morphine contains a dormative principle" that is not conveyed
> just as well by "morphine puts people to sleep". So saying
> "morphine puts people to sleep because it contains a dormative
> principle" is a vaccuous explanation, explaining no more than
> saying "morphine puts people to sleep because it puts people
> to sleep".

LOL. That is /exactly/ Bateson's point, O slow-witted one. It's
a shame you stopped reading at the first paragraph. Then you
would not have made such a fool of yourself.

>
> So Bateson was concerned with the notion of *explanation*, not
> the notion of *definition*. He is talking about what makes for
> a good explanation, not what makes for a good definition.

Perhaps you would enlighten us with what you consider to be the
/differences/ between *explanation* and *definition* that would
render the use of dormitive principle in a definition legitimate.
  You seem to be arguing that the use of a dormitive principle is
perfectly reasonable in definitions.

> In practice, whether something is a suitable explanation or not
> depends on the knowledge of the person asking for an explanation,
> and on what gap in that knowledge the person is trying to fill.
> Suppose I know that a particular hospital patient is in severe
> pain, and is trying unsuccessfully to get to sleep. The nurse
> comes in and gives the patient a shot of morphine. If I ask
> the nurse "Why did you give him morphine?" then for the nurse
> to answer "Because morphine has dormative powers" is an adequate
> explanation for her actions (assuming I already know what "dormative
> powers" means). It *isn't* an adequate explanation for why morphine
> puts people to sleep.

Well, I suppose even the mutterings of an idiot might make sense
in a well-constructed context. 

-- 
"I know that most men, including those at ease with
problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom
accept even the simplest and most obvious truth
if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity
of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining
to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others,
and which they have woven, thread by thread,
into the fabric of their lives." -
	-- Tolstoy

Relevant Pages

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