These kinds of arguments are based in large part on analogies. In his search for significant similarities and contrasts in systems involving communication and meaning, Bateson believed (and here he picks up emphases of Vico and such Romantic protestors against empiricism as Blake) that it was legitimate to use intuitions based un aspects of order glimpsed in the examination of any complex "cybernetic" system (and perhaps based, ultimately, on our own sense of ourselves as organized systems of person/environment) to explore other organized realms. He called thisabduction"the lateral extension of abstract components of description" (1979:142), which he took to be as important as deduction and induction. "Metaphor, dream, parable, allegory, the whole of art, the whole of [social?] science, the whole of religion, the whole of poetry, totemism . . . the organization of facts in comparative anatomy - all these are instances or aggregates of instances of abduction. . . ." He then, characteristically, pushed the idea further in his search for analogies of order. "But obviously the possibility of abduction extends to the very roots also of physical science, Newton's analysis of the solar system and the periodic table of the elements being historical examples" (1979: 142-143).
Bateson's growing theoretical emphasis the adaptional nature of human thought and behavior led to a close fit between his intellectual and moral positions. He was deeply disturbed by the decimation of aboriginal populations, by the degradation of ecological systems, by economic oppression, and by senseless wars and arms races; but he took them and the countless other disasters and fearsome omens of contemporary life to be manifestations of a limited number of deeper disorders of a systemic nature, some or all of which could be defined in the formal terms of cybernetic systems of communication and meaning that comprised, for him,life, mind, and society. One of the causes of these breakdowns, he thought, involves the peculiar nature of human consciousness as an adaptive system. In his view, as we have noted, consciousness is dominated by purposefulness, and purposeful thought has a linearstructure. That is, it establishes goals and devises means for attaining them without being governed by, or even aware of, the circular and reticulate structure of cause and effect that orders the systems in which purposeful action takes place.
It should be noted that the primacy of this kind of "consciousness" (which is more a matter of discursive, culturally prescribed "rational thought" than, say, Freudian "consciousness") in mental activity, the range of situations to which it is thought to apply, and above all its influence on action and the available power coupled to it, vary among individuals and groups. Thus, "when implemented by modern technology a consciousness dominated by purpose becomes disruptive of the balances between individuals, their societies and their ecosystems" (1972:434).
Thecurefortheinadequaciesofconsciousness,ofpurposiverationality,isnottorejectitinfavorofapassionatenonrationality(andhereBatesonseparateshimselffromtheextremeRomanticposition)buttoaugmentandcompleteit.ForBatesontheinadequaciesoflinear,purposive,discursiveprocessesofconsciousnessarecorrectedbyenlistingtheaidofthenondiscursive,pattern-comprehending,emotionallysaturated"primaryprocesses,"inFreud'ssense,processeswhichtoBateson,however,quotingBlake's"Atearisanintellectualthing,"representedlegitimateaspectsofknowing.Art,aspectsofreligion,andcomplexsymbolicformarevehiclesforconveyingnecessaryinformation.Takinghismetaphorherefromreligiouslanguage,art,forexample,is"partofm
正在提交中...
