Oh man.. this is the keystone question.. but I rephrase it.. why some people take some narratives over other when there is some kind of different offers?
Are there some mythologies which are universal? Why are they taken?
So proof in the scientific science is not enough if you are not in a mythical scientific world.
An example. There is an old history about an anthropologists applying science proof in a compeltely different world view... prrof was irrelvant in their society.. they were worried about why?
So .. you can proof something.. like that you had a car accident because of bad brakes ina car.. but in another frame the key question could be why the combination of bad brakes, and bad wetaher and your car having it and you being there happened to you?
Different mythologies have different focus so scientific proof or why explanation or any other question or mythology I may heard of has sense..
But why when there are different options available some people choose one over other?
Finally, rituals based on belief are more powerful in a judeo-christian vision of the world. I am not sure it is teh same in all cultures.. so the answer of this anthropologists may not be really universal.. but very common in society where the one-God is a possible thought (the idea that there is only one God is quite complex and it does not exists in a lot of places... therefore the evangelical "success").
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
Narrative shorthand pseudo-explanations seem to be the default form of primate social signalling.
Going beyond that to deliberate reality-testing (even to some limited extent) seems to be an optional stage of development.
Effectively it's a meta-narrative ('question what you're told and what you believe') that fills the space that's usually filled up with default signalling.
It's also a question of how safe the surrounding environment is perceived to be. If surroundings are safe, mistakes and exploration are acceptable and you'd expect narrative systems to reflect that.
If the environment is threatening, mistakes are potentially fatal, and narratives are more likely to converge on much simpler ideas of right and wrong.
Absolutely.
proof in the scientific science (sense?) is not enough if you are not in a mythical scientific world
Right, but it's not quite what I meant. Most people in the cultures we live in (and with whom we would wish to communicate) are, to some extent, in a mythical scientific world. They have notions to do with "proof", "facts", "observation", they share a narrative about science's ability to deal with these things (even if the narrative is relatively sketchy). In some cases they may believe in science in a quasi-religious manner. So that kind of narrative may be persuasive.
But I was asking, with the word "proof", about rational discourse that does not demand a leap of faith. The free market ideology offers a belief system: invisible hand, wheels within wheels, immutable laws calling for purity of application to produce magical outcomes. This narrative works, people go along with it. If you tell them, look, reality is complex, there are all kinds of problems with asymmetric information and influence, not to speak of plain power, that skew things so the pure market narrative is inapplicable, you'll be followed by a small number who were probably already thinking that anyway.
So I was wondering, do people really prefer to be asked to believe? Is a leap of faith attractive?
I think I can say from my own experience, having lived part of my life in a very religious setting, that a leap of faith offers relief. People speak of their happiness that a burden has rolled away from their backs. In the Christian narrative, that burden is explained as sin, but I think it's the burden of existence as an individual with the responsibility of making choices; the leap of faith is abandonment to predetermined choices, to a complete explanatory narrative of what you must do each day, to a new belonging to a collective existence (the body of believers). Those who find that hugely satisfying may have psychological weaknesses of the kind exploited by cults... But still, one can see the kind of pleasurable emotions the leap of faith can bring about.
Does an attractive/persuasive narrative (seductive, to use tbg's term), have to offer some or all of these elements, even in an attenuated form?
By asking people to accept a narrative that we call reality or fact-based, are we at risk of producing anxiety?
How far are we willing to think in terms of a new progressive narrative that entails a leap of faith?
Or does any complete narrative, anyway, call for the suspension of disbelief? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Sort of like students wanting you to tell them the answer to their homework but not being really interested in an explanation. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
I think that an anthropologists called M. Delgado is right. He states that science is really powerful when it is combined with magical explanations.
According to him.. nothing beats science and factual science when the explanation outwards is magical and directly mythical myths clear in the air..
And I agree with him.. but now convince scientists that they should learn a lot about magic thinking and magic explanation and eyes start rolling.
My humble humble opinion... yes science together with magic thinking is more powerful that faith jumps... the mysticism .. the wonderful, the amazing is more powerful that the security. But jump of faiths are better than plane "compelxity"
My equatiosn would be
sicence < jump of faith
science + amazement + myths >> jump of faith
At least in our society. Ei, afew.. no proof whatsoever for this.
Any new narrative/paradigm requires a leap of faith in the beginning. Verification/proof comes only afterwards. And this for very rational epistemological reasons.
First, we all believe in science, not as a religious belief, but as trust, because we are not able to make all the experiments which prove the laws of physics, chemicals, biology... We can learn which has been the process of a demonstration or experiment, but we nevertheless have to believe/trust the scientists. What makes us trust them is the specific culture and methods of the scientific community (openness, peer review, debate, reproducibility) but, at the end of the day we have to believe/trust them. Hence the scandal when a fraud is unveiled.
Second, the question of the proof is a very peculiar one in social sciences. It is very difficult to demonstrate/proof something in the field of social sciences. What they can do is propose models which have a good explanatory/heuristic power for a givens set of facts/phenomena. Only certain social sciences like experimental psychology and economy can demonstrate some "laws", but these are "demonstrated" only within the conditions of the experimentation, and their transposition in real life is very problematic. (to use a quantum mechanics metaphor, the decoherence delay is very short...).
Third, and this has been clearly explained by Thomas Kuhn and Edgar Morin, there is a logical impossibility to demonstrate/prove the efficiency of a new narrative/paradigm. Why? Because, as it is new, it has not been widely tested/experimented. Even if the new narrative/paradigm is promising, its promises will only be held in the future. And to test/experiment/prove it, you have to convince a significant number of persons (in Kuhn's case, scientists) who accept to drop the certainties/habits of the old narrative/paradigm and to adopt the uncertainties of the new one.
It's even more true if it's a new economic/social narrative, because you can only test/experiment it in real conditions, which means involving a number of people and institutions. For sure, your new paradigm will eventually have to deliver, otherwise, people will go back to the ancient one but, at the beginning, you have to rely upon a leap of faith.
That's the reason why I said that you have to seduce a significant number of people in order to make possible a narrative change in the socio-economic domain. "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
In science you do not only have to beleive /trust in scientists.. somehow... the important thign is that yo have to believe , understand or think as relevant the scientic mythology or paradigm.
Notions like facts, experiments or reality as an object as understood in our science businenss is pure mythology.. just as another myhtology. An as any other mythology which is quite ingrained we can not avoid believing in it if we are in the business.
For a lot of people science is just a status genrator.. like religion used to be.. but for the people doing scince or understanding the notions of "fact".. and the "how"question and other basic scientific mythologies.. the real leap of faith is believing in science, whcih we do nto feel like a leap of faith because we consider ours special (as any other perosn with other mythology would do).. in the sense that it is a myth as any other one.. and as obvious as any other religion could be to a religios person or buddhism to a buddhist or any gender relation learnt or spatial symbolic strucutre in any given society.
Here's how it goes: the enlightenment produced both Kant's epistemology which made it clear that we don't know what there is (noumenon) but only our perceptions (phenomena) that we assume caused by a noumenon and so allow us to infer things about it. The enlightenment also produced the narrative of the scientific revolution and the scientific method, and the belief that reason is a powerful force that can ultimately address and solve any problem. Then people like Humboldt founded anthropology. And then anthropology shows us just how fragile the basis for rationalism, the enlightenment and the scientific method is: it's just a narrative, and not a particularly appealing one at that.
We're doomed, I tell you, doomed. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
But we are not doomed (well maybe .... I just hope not)... if we apply your ideas about a scholars and my ideas about using magic thinking to transmit ideas about science...everything is solved :)
That would make science particularly appealing!!!!!
A pleasrue I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
A scholar performing the functions we have just described may not be a good teacher.
But I beg to differ: I think there is a difference between the religious belief/creed and the rational belief/trust. The difference lies in the revocability of trust and the radical doubt that is at the heart of the scientific culture (and which you practise with incomparable virtuosity...). The religious belief/creed in science leads to scientism, as Migeru says somewhere in this thread. "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
And sure.. there is a difference..absolutely .. no doubt.. each mythology is absolutely different, and of course religion and science are...
Although Kant envisioned that both would address different issues...pity, people did not like Kant and his "!how" and "why" questions.
So in mythologies, mechansims and basis , the same.. content, different... and I guess you know which mythology I like more... or trust more :)
