Re: Re: "Spinoza was a communist thinker long before Marx"

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
The selected quotes from Pen-lers below the signature on
this reply (source from Jim Devine -Spinoza, and Yoshie Furuhashi - Hobbes)
are representative of the early period in philosophy of "rationalist"
rejection of emotions as appropriate to knowledge production.  I would like
to sketch my opposition to the Jim Devine quoted Spinoza remarks below
through the contemporary "theory of mind"  or "joint attention" (from
research on Autism).  This continues an earlier debate on Autistic Economics
with Jim Devine when my ideas were too thin to continue about embodiment
concerning Post Autistic economics in (See Pen-l archives Date: Sun, 03 Sep
2000 10:32:28 -0700 for the thread on Autistic Economics).

Jim,
"I think that "disembodied" is slightly off the mark. The key problems
of the dominant school of economics involve being anti-social (following
Maggie T to see society as an illusion, with only individuals being real)
and excessively abstract."...

"I want to reiterate and finish the coda to my last long missive in this
thread: I don't think the key problem is A-type or autistic economics as
much as neoclassical pro-capitalist (and anti-feminist, etc.) economics. In
other words, the form is important, but the content of the economics is even
more important. The main reason why abstract, mathematical, A-type economics
is seen as the ideal in economics is because it fits well with the commodity
fetishism that prevails in capitalist society, it doesn't go against the
business political pressures from outside academia, and it fits with the
scholasticism that has tended to rule academia since universities began in
the late-feudal period. That is, the form of economic theorizing in many way
simply reflects its content, which in turn reflects the societal
environment."

Doyle,
I had started this debate with Jim Devine on Pen-l in September
primarily in regard to the usage of a disabled person as the "other" to
characterize a problem labeling economics as "Autistic Economics".  I wrote
at the time that I would return to the debate when my understanding rose to
the technical level of Jim Devine's observations on economics about using
the label Autism.

Rationalism arose from a large literate populace relying upon text as a
source of knowledge production.  Text does not convey emotions clearly and
unambiguously.  An educated literate culture that sees emotion as different
or apart from word production and in science as inappropriate, would then
reject emotion as a part of knowledge production.  The relative lack of
necessary components of human communication in text is the reason that
mathematics also is abstracted in knowledge production, and does not need to
be related to a disability as an anti-social aspect of Autistics.

Swarm Intelligence", James Kennedy, Russell C Eberhart, Morgan Kaufman,
2001, page 419

"This chapter has argued that mental events are rooted in
social interactions,  Why is this important?  Because it shifts the
explanation of mind away from the inner mechanisms of the individual--and
especially from the brain, which is an entirely isolated piece of
machinery--and out into the connections between people.  The experience of
thinking is contradicted by empirical evidence about what thinking really
is.  The prevailing myth is that of mind as an internal process, the myth of
the given, the myth of consciousness, and we believe it as a fact."...

Doyle,
Theory of mind leads to the conclusion if we consider primate
evolution that shared attention, "joint attention", is the cognitive source
of human language (or mathematics)

"Origins of Intelligence, The evolution of Cognitive Development in Monkeys,
Apes, And Humans", Sue Taylor Parker and Michael L. McKinney, Johns Hopkins
Press, 1999 page 162,

"A pioneering study of language acquisition has shown that certain
sensorimotor series are more closely correlated with the emergence of words
and signs than others.  In a series of studies, Bates and her colleagues
(Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979; Bates et al, 1991)
discovered the following pattern: Word Comprehension at about 9 to 10 months
correlates with the development of fifth-stage imitation and causality but
not with object permanence and spatial cognition.  Behaviorally, word
comprehension's correlates with the emergence of tool use, gestural
routines, and deictic gestures (giving, point, and showing)."

Doyle
The cognitive development of shared attention skills preceding
language in a typical human being per the reference above to the
"fifth-stage" developmental process of the cognitive system in infants.
This theory of human cognition renders incoherent a characterization of an
economic regime as Autistic or anti-social since we really don't get what
the label, Autism, tells us how capitalist economics are anti-social.  In
fact we are better off understanding this by referring directly to problems
in shared attention.

Jim describes; "the dominant school of economics involve being
anti-social"...

..."That is, the form of economic theorizing in many way simply reflects its
content, which in turn reflects the societal environment."

Doyle
Autistic Economics as defined above does not show some aspect of how
attention shapes social structure.   Jim Devine instead indicates
anti-social Autistics have something in common with anti-social capitalist
economic mathematics.   What is the important aspect of autism missing in
economic knowledge production?   Jim doesn't say or perhaps can't say
because he is unaware of "joint attention".

The importance of Autism to social structure concerns understanding how
shared attention is at the center of human language production.  From that
point then to understand how text based knowledge production has two
attenuated and missing attention elements, emotions and gestures.  Text
based systems cannot adequately produce emotions and gesture.

To illustrate most people prefer television and movies to the press.
Despite the limitations of movies compared to text (not a shared media not
interactive) the public finds movies more compelling.  Joint attention
theory indicates that people are compelled by seeing faces to better
understand emotion, and gestures that point at where attention ought to be.

Collaboration to learn work and to work together is a matter of shared
attention in knowledge production since knowing where to focus attention is
central to cognitive needs to learn.

Where Jim Devine writes,

Jim,
"this sounds a little bit like pen-l participants"...

Doyle
Automated Knowledge production like mouse cursors resemble a gesture
pointer.   The central process of language production, sharing attention,
leads to mimicry of intention in others.   Where attention happens to be is
what we need to know in sharing knowledge with other people.  This is the
scientific grounds for the debate about embodiment between Jim Devine and I
cited above.  Text based knowledge production obscures the necessity of such
additional content in knowledge production.  The best way to understand that
is to observe how attention requires human gesture in face to face
conversation.  thanks, Doyle Saylor

From: Yoshie Furuhashi first quoting Jim Devine, then Yoshie adds,

*****   Indeed, those who have experienced the fickleness of the masses are
almost reduced to despair; for the masses are governed solely by their
emotions, not by reason; they rush wildly into everything, and are readily
corrupted either by avarice or by luxurious living.  Every single man thinks
he knows everything, and wants to fashion the world to his liking....Vanity
makes him despise his equals, nor will he be guided by them.  Through envy
of superior fame or fortune -- which is never equal for all men -- he
desires another's misfortune and takes pleasure therein.  There is no need
for me to go through the whole catalogue, for everyone knows to what
wickedness men are frequently persuaded by dissatisfaction with their lot
and desire for change, by hasty anger, by disdain of poverty, and how their
minds are engrossed and agitated by these emotions. (Spinoza,
_Theological-Political Treatise_, p. 193)   *****

this sounds a little bit like pen-l participants...

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Even better, Thomas Hobbes wrote in _Leviathan_:

*****   Nature hath made men equal, in the faculty of the body, and mind; as
that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or
of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the
difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can
thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as
well as he.  For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough
to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with
others, that are in the same danger with himself.

And as to the faculty of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded upon
words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon general, and infallible
rules, called science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being
not a native faculty, born with us; not attained (as prudence,) while we
look after somewhat else,) I find yet a greater equality amongst men, than
that of strength.  For prudence, is but experience; which equal time,
equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves
unto.  That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain
conceit of one's own wisdom, which almost all men think they have in a
greater degree, than the vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a
few others, whom by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve.
For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many
others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will
hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves; for they see their own
wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.  But this proveth rather that
men are in that point equal, than unequal.  For there is not ordinarily a
greater sign of the equal distribution of any thing, than that every man is
contented with his share.
<http://www.lcl.cmu.edu/CAAE/80130/part1/sect4/texts/Levi13.htm> *****

So, PEN-l serves to prove human equality in the faculty of the mind.

Yoshie