CoPhi: Neurath's Boat, Kaitlyn Williams

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Neurath's Boat, Kaitlyn Williams

Kaitlyn Williams, Section 3

Neurath's Boat

In my midterm presentation I spoke about logical positivism and the contributions of AJ Ayer. Logical positivism focuses on accepting truth based off experience or accepting only what science can prove as true. I’d like to discuss another philosopher’s take on logical positivism, Otto Neurath, and how he developed his beliefs with Neurath’s boat using economic and social theories. Neurath’s boat captured the main features of his scientific knowledge regarding the use of qualitative measurements to examine something rather than objective items.

Otto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher and sociologist who lived from 1882 – 1945. He was a logical positivist who focused on behavioral social and economic theory. Neurath studied ancient cultures, such as Egyptian and Aristotelian, to help shape his view of economics. Specifically, he studied Egyptian visual language and Aristotelian social wealth to develop his ideas regarding economic structure and social structure. Egyptian visual language, hieroglyphics, was inscribed on temples, monuments, and tombs over 5000 years ago. (More on hieroglyphics) The symbols included pictures of people, animals, and objects. Aristotle’s ideas on social wealth focused on the care of common goods versus private property. He contrasted the two believing the public would focus more on caring for their own property rather than the property of the public. Aristotle also examined the human nature of men, and their natural devotion to care for their own self, property, and money. (More on Aristotelian economy)

Neurath studied war economics and formed his theory about natural economy and a holistic requirement of knowledge which would help understand, predict, and control complex social phenomena. Political economy, an interest of Neurath, developed his ideas regarding qualitative measurement and the limits of quantitative measurements. In his study of war economics, he focused on the importance of qualitative measurements instead of solely quantitative. His idea was that a study of qualitative measurements would lead to an account of overall happiness and value, providing for a holistic depiction of social economy. He distinguished the importance of understanding the function of an item and how an item was used to further understand its efficiency while focusing on the availability of resources. Within Neurath’s studies of qualitative measurement he determined the difference between quality of life and the basis of life. He regarded quality of life as happiness, pleasure, and welfare based on one’s experiences. Basis of life was regarded as complex conditions such as housing, food, work, reading, and other aspects of daily life. He termed these complex conditions as “life physiognomy.”

The Vienna Circle was composed of a group of philosophers who used knowledge of physical and formal sciences to create a new idea of empiricism. Neurath became a part of the Vienna Circle, in which he focused on political and social reform based on Marxist theory. Karl Marx’s economic, social, and political theory revolved around the separations between the upper and lower classes and the idea that eventually the working class would take control of the capitalist economy. Neurath based some of his ideas on Marxist theory and in doing so he developed socialist policies regarding housing and adult education. Neurath’s position regarding the symbolic logical standard unified him with other philosophers of similar beliefs, discussing ideas regarding science and language.

(more on The Vienna Circle)

Being an Austrian philosopher, Neurath was concerned with the debate between monetary market economy or moneyless central planning. Neurath focused his side on moneyless central planning and developed his ideas using the analogy of a boat. The source of his motivation for the boat analogy was a battleship from war time economics. In this explanation he compared economic success to success in battle. The captain of the ship would have to account for things regarding the course of the ship, power of engines, and storage. The supplies and components of the ship are compared to people and things that make up an economy. In a war situation the goal would be to win the battle and in the economic situation to change life situations. The captain of the boat would have to make difficult situations as to how the ship would operate under various conditions, similar to how a leader of an economy would have to make decisions about the people and the conditions regarding their lives. This related to his beliefs about qualitative measurement versus quantitative in the ways that decisions could not be based solely on numbers but conditions like quality of life and complex conditions.

In the analogy, the captain is unable to get off of the boat to visualize what is going on, he has to make decisions about the boat while on the boat. This is comparable to events in our own lives in the way that we are unable to remove ourselves and take a step back from our own situations in order to see the whole picture all at once. We will have to make decisions, or repair our ship, as we continue to live and face the effects of those choices.

Source list

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Otto-Neurath

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/political-economy.html

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vienna-circle/

https://www.history.com/news/hieroglyphics-facts-ancient-egypt

https://mises.org/library/aristotle-private-property-and-money

1 comment:

PhilDecember 2, 2021 at 6:45 PM
What do you see as the philosophical (not just economic/social) implications of Neurath's boat analogy? What does it say about belief, knowledge, certainty etc.?
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Admirable profession

"...Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live..."

"I went to the woods because...

I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion... "

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there...

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now... I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..."

Where he lived, and what he lived for

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Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear... ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... [Jefferson, Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]”

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“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”
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“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”
― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.”
― William Blake

“To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”
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“It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
==

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American life is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

==
On the other hand, eastern enlightenment...

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”
― Bodhidharma, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

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