The Fourth Estate

November 1, 2019 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

As the basic institutions and fabric of our democracy come under general attack from within our very own government, I am reminded of this fourfold, long ago enlarged from the original but variable threefold of the estates of the realm. The journalism of the free press still remains a very important part of our society and has long served us well, shining a disinfecting light on the misdeeds of powerful and corrupt elements of the wealthy class, and yes, even some of those in the leadership of religious institutions.

Of course, the very same powerful and corrupt want to attack the scrutiny of the media by childish name-calling and vilification: “enemy of the people”, “lame-stream media”, and other silly phrases that encourage glad-handing and back-slapping, winking and smirking. But these attacks are extremely serious in their intention to weaken and transform a press geared towards informing the ordinary individual, and substitute for it an instrument for propaganda and misinformation serving the puissant.

As newspapers and news magazines lose readers, and traditional television network news shows lose viewers, the internet has provided a multitude of new ways for the “common” individual to be mislead, to be encouraged to give into base and false narratives, and to appeal to tribal mentalities of “us versus them”. I can barely see how this disorder might ultimately benefit the wealthy, but how does this serve the “clergy” of religious organizations that speak of peace and brotherhood yet side with a destructive, hateful agenda?

Oh look, some are calling blogging and social media a “fifth estate”. Piffle!

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Estate

At first I wanted to put “Free Press” into the fourfold below, but choose “Free Lunch” instead because I didn’t want it to be too political. Oh, well.

Free Four

Also, this:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/aaron-sorkin-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-open-letter

[*11.129]

fourfolds

Four Things

October 26, 2019 Martin K. Jones 3 Comments

I’ve heard that learning English isn’t easy, but I don’t really remember my own experience of doing so. Learning the difference between these four indefinite pronouns is just one of the many things to know, and seems to be a common grade school poster to hang up in the classroom.

Anything
Something
Everything
Nothing

Some use these four words together in a clever sentence or epigram, but today I’ve got nothing except this sad little diagram. I hope it is of some use to someone.

I also see this is done with anybody, somebody, everybody, and nobody, and there are some cute little stories out there too! Plus here’s another diagram.

Further Reading:

https://www.google.com/search?q=something+everything+anything+nothing&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=somebody+everybody+anybody+nobody&tbm=isch

The Square of Opposition

[*11.140]

Biology, fourfolds, Science

The Four Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex

October 18, 2019 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

The brain, the brain, the center of the chain…

— The Babysitter’s Club

The cerebral cortex is the outside part of the human brain’s cerebrum, with the cerebrum consisting of two hemispheres connected to each other by another structure called the corpus callosum. Each hemisphere’s cerebral cortex is traditionally divided into four main lobes, which loosely manage specific brain functions and specifically all voluntary actions of the body.

Because each side of the cerebral cortex has four lobes, I guess you could say that the cerebral cortex has eight lobes. Interestingly, each hemisphere is a bit functionally different in its operation, so perhaps those eight lobes are indeed distinct: left frontal lobe, right frontal lobe, left parietal lob, etc.

There has been research over the years about the functional differences in the hemispheres. Roger Sperry won a Nobel prize in 1981 for his pioneering work on split-brain research, although some of those findings are now known to be much more nuanced than before. Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist has written a interesting sounding book on the differences between the two hemispheres, that is high on my to-read list!

Frontal Lobe: attention, planning, deciding, movement
Parietal Lobe: language, taste, touch, temperature
Temporal Lobe: hearing, emotion, smell, memory
Occipital Lobe: sight, vision

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobes_of_the_brain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_cortex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Wolcott_Sperry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary

[*11.148]

fourfolds, Metaphysics

Everything is Four

August 22, 2019 Martin K. Jones 10 Comments

Is everything four? Some try to prove it with a numerological trick. Take a word. Count its letters. Convert the number to words. Count letters. Repeat. Every English word seems to end up on four or 4, with nowhere else to go! Voila!

Since I’ve searched for this topic, a musician has released an album with this title. Cool!

But what do I mean by it? Everything can be divided into four parts, or has four aspects, or four sides, or what? I’m not sure, exactly.

But let’s test it against Alfred Whitehead’s Criteria for Metaphysical Theories!

Is it consistent? Yes! That is, nothing in the theory contradicts other parts of the theory, because there are no other parts. And if something is part of a foursome, that something can also be a foursome (even if an arbitrary one).
Is it coherent? Yes! That is, the theory is logically whole, such as it is. A bit boring? Perhaps…
Is it applicable? Yes! That is, we can apply our method to reduce something to four parts to everything, as long as we don’t care what the parts are. Plus we can combine anything with three other things, ad nauseum!
Is it adequate? No, not really. It does little to explain itself or the rest of the world.

So, we must continue our search for our ultimate metaphysical theory. It must be everything is four, plus something else… plus two more somethings…

Further Reading:

http://www.unterzuber.com/4our.html

http://www.marijn.org/everything-is-4/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Is_4

Whitehead’s Criteria for Metaphysical Theories

The Collatz Conjecture

[*11.140]

fourfolds, sociology

Grid-Group Cultural Theory, V2

August 19, 2019 Martin K. Jones 2 Comments

The Grid-Group Cultural Theory (also known as the Cultural Theory of Risk) originated from the studies of anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. Grid and Group are two dimensions of sociality, each with a low and high value: Grid measures the differentiation between people (so low grid means people are similar), and Group measures the cohesion or social bonds between people (so low group means people do not have strong bonds).

From Wikipedia:

A “high group” way of life exhibits a high degree of collective control, whereas a “low group” one exhibits a much lower one and a resulting emphasis on individual self-sufficiency. A “high grid” way of life is characterized by conspicuous and durable forms of stratification in roles and authority, whereas a “low grid” one reflects a more egalitarian ordering.

And so:

Individualist: Low group and low grid, Nature is robust
Fatalist: Low group and high grid, Nature is capricious
Hierarchist: High group and high grid, Nature is tolerant
Egalitarian: High group and low grid, Nature is fragile

	High Grid	Low Grid
High Group	Hierarchist (Positional)	Egalitarian (Enclaves)
Low Group	Fatalist (Isolates)	Individualist (Markets)

Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Theory_of_risk

http://changingminds.org/explanations/culture/grid-group_culture.htm

https://www.dustinstoltz.com/blog/2014/06/04/diagram-of-theory-douglas-and-wildavskys-gridgroup-typology-of-worldviews

[*4.86, *8.112, *11.4, *11.5]

fourfolds

Humankind’s Main Feature

August 17, 2019 Martin K. Jones 2 Comments

What is the most distinctive attribute of the human species? What will be our legacy? Is it…

Homo Sapiens – man the thinker?
Homo Faber – man the maker?
Homo Ludens – man the (game) player?
Homo Necans – man the killer?

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_faber

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Necans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_human_species

I kind of like Homo Occisor for “Man the Killer”, but Homo Necans is already out there.

Also see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiddity

[*8.135, *11.139]

fourfolds, Metaphysics, ontology, Philosophy

Writing the Book of the World

August 10, 2019 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

If one was writing a book that described the entire world or universe as it is, how should that book present the world to us? It is not enough to speak truly, itemizing “all that is the case”, one must also use the right notions while doing so.

Philosopher Theodore Sider wants us to accept structure as the all important fundamental notion of how to talk about the world. His idea of structure is that it reveals where the joints or articulations of the world can be carved, and that the structure of the world is real and it is objective. Structure is the right and proper way to find these joints, and go about this carving.

(Of course the structure that Sider promotes is not to be confused with the structuralism of linguistics and anthropology that was so popular before deconstruction and post-modernism critiqued it nearly to death. This post is not about structuralism because its structure is a reflection of language and the mind itself, not an attribute of the actual world.)

Chapters 1-8 are titled: Structure, Primitivism, Connections, Substantivity, Metametaphysics, Beyond the Predicate, Questions, and Rivals. Chapters 9-12 are devoted to ontology, logic, time, and modality (because I guess these are favorite topics in metaphysics) and what structure tells us about them. I don’t think Sider is saying that reality is carved naturally into these four domains, but I think it makes a rather nice fourfold.

In Metaphysics, Ontology is another word for Being, but it can also mean a classification system for the different kinds of things that exist (but I guess that’s not metaphysical). Modality is the Metaphysical or Epistemic study of necessity and possibility, so it is certainly related to time. There are also modal logics which have quantifiers for modalities such as necessity and possibility.

I closing I must say that once you carve up some structure by its joints, then you are left with parts, which may be structures in their own right. And as I’ve posited elsewhere, functions and actions are the structures and parts of time. I also wonder if there is a comparison of Sider’s structure to the metaphysics of E. J. Lowe, but perhaps I should just read each of their work.

Further Reading:

Theodore Sider / Writing the Book of the World

http://tedsider.org/

Some reviews:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/writing-the-book-of-the-world/

Click to access 12-05-wtbotw-review.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-varieties/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-epistemology/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

Review that needs registration to read:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n16/aw-moore/carving-at-the-joints

[*9.8, *11.112]

fourfolds, Philosophy

The Four Types of Knowledge

August 3, 2019 Martin K. Jones 3 Comments

What types of knowledge are there?

In his Nicomachean Ethics (Book VI), Aristotle famously describes several intellectual virtues. There is Techne, or Art; Episteme, or Knowledge, Phronesis, or Prudence, Sophia, or Wisdom, and Nous, or Intellect. He considered Sophia a combination of Nous and Episteme, but some others think it stands alone. Nous also seems to be more subjective, as well as supplying Phronesis with its aims, but is complicated. So are there three types, or five? I would like there to be four, thank you very much.

In Venharanta and Markopoulos’s paper, Phronesis seems to be the balance or sum of Techne, Episteme, and Sophia. In Carsten Pedersen’s web article, Techne, Episteme, Sophia, and Phronesis form a fourfold, with Nous in the center. Jon Alan Schmidt, a member of Virtuous Engineers, distinguishes between kinds of knowledge (Techne, Episteme, and Phronesis) and forms of human activity associated with them (Poiesis, Theoria, and Praxis). I like this distinction. What is the activity associated with Sophia?

Not knowing any Greek puts me at a disadvantage. Nous is linked to Noesis as a type of knowledge and Noein which seems to be the activity. I will present the following table and see how I like it!

Forms of Human Activity	Types of Knowledge
Theoria	Episteme	Science
Praxis	Phronesis	Prudence
Poiesis	Techne	Craft
Noein	Sophia	Wisdom

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous

https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/nous-noesis-noetic.html

https://www.psychsoma.co.za/learning_in_vivo/2009/09/techne-episteme-poiesis-praxis.html

https://sites.google.com/site/praxisandtechne/Home/architecture/knowledge/episteme

http://ian.umces.edu/blog/2013/08/29/its-all-greek-to-me-the-terms-praxis-and-phronesis-in-environmental-philosophy/

Knowledge for Aristotle & Plato

Kurt von Fritz / ΝΟΥΣ, Noein, and Their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras):
Part I. From the Beginnings to Parmenides, Classical Philology, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct., 1945), pp. 223-242 https://www.jstor.org/stable/265805

Kurt von Fritz / ΝΟΥΣ, Noein, and Their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras):
Part II. The Post-Parmenidean Period, Classical Philology, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 1946), pp. 12-34
https://www.jstor.org/stable/267530

Vanharanta H., Markopoulos E. / Visualization of the Wisdom Cube Scientific Knowledge Space for Management and Leadership. In: Kantola J., Nazir S. (eds) Advances in Human Factors, Business Management and Leadership. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 961. Springer https://doi.org/10.1007
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20154-8_2

In Danish (English via Chrome translation):
http://omsigt.dk/hvad-er-praksisfilosofi/

Virtuous Engineers from Jon Schmidt

Bent Flyvjerg / Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again
https://www.librarything.com/work/185825/reviews/11378122

Interesting Anime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noein:_To_Your_Other_Self

[*3.34, *11.130]

fourfolds

Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution

July 19, 2019 Martin K. Jones 4 Comments

There seems to be rather a lot written about Conflict Management (CM) and Conflict Resolution (CR). CM is a key activity in the business world, as conflict arises both within a business between the individuals that comprise it and without a business when they compete with each other.

CM realizes the grim reality that conflict will always be with us, whereas CR at least hopes for an end of the particular disagreement. CM tries to investigate and detail how one can learn from conflict, and reduce its disruptive forces or use it to advantage. As we know, capitalism is chock-full of aggressive metaphors and ideologies.

There are several models of conflict but they mostly have two measures: assertiveness or “concern for self”, and cooperativeness or “concern for others”. The models usually place a fifth term in the middle, labeled “compromising”.

Low assertiveness, low cooperativeness: Avoiding
High assertiveness, low cooperativeness: Dominating
Low assertiveness, high cooperativeness: Obliging
High assertiveness, high cooperativeness: Integrating

It would be interesting at this time to say how this subject matter relates to the fourfold Means and Ends, since they are obviously connected and even share several of the same terms. However, I just can’t seem to inspire myself to investigate and say anything worthwhile right now.

I haven’t disentangled the history of the subject, so I’m not going to name originators or contributors just yet. I guess I really don’t like conflict and it just makes me generally tired to contemplate it, even in the abstract. I guess you can just put me in the “avoiding” pigeonhole.

Avoiding this subject has lead me to another one, that of Gregory Bateson and his schismogenesis. Perhaps the opposite of combogenesis (mentioned previously), this concept seems to be helpful in understanding conflict escalation. Would this idea help in thinking about division of cultural groups (discussed here)?

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution