Whitehead refutes Becker-Stigler

By -
"We habitually observe by the method of difference. Sometimes we see an elephant, and sometimes we do not. The result is that an elephant, when present, is noticed." -- Process and Reality, p. 7

Just so. If preferences were not something that changed, we would not even have a word for them.

Comments

  1. Wabulon12:42 AM

    The totally obvious that no one seems to have noticed are the best comments!

    ReplyDelete
  2. paulp127x2:25 AM

    Replace "preferences" by "likes". Then you have
    "If likes were not something that changed, we would not even have a word for them". This is not true. We also have dislikes, and the method of difference explains why we have both concepts, and would continue to explain why we have both concepts in a world where likes and dislikes never change.
    Similarly with preferences. They are sufficiently different from things we like less, that the concept is natural , leading us to invent a handy word for them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah1:02 PM

      Paul, you are not understanding the Becker-Stigler paper I am targeting. You are, in fact, with this comment, siding with me *against* Becker-Stigler, when you think you are disagreeing with me!

      "They are sufficiently different from things we like less..."

      Becker-Stigler deny this: it is all about consumption capital for them.

      Delete
  3. paulp127x2:51 AM

    That's ok, Gene, I was just going on the small snippet in your post

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Libertarians, My Libertarians!

By -
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas --  unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
Read more

"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness

By -
 I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Read more