On Fri, 23 Jun 1995, John Warfield wrote:
>WHAT DOES THE FOREGOING HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? Well, suppose you
>profess to be a manager/leader, and suppose you are being driven by
>presuppositions of which you are unaware. Suppose you love to be open
>with your associates, but when you make decisions, the not-said
>undermines what you have said, because your associates do not see what
>you said to ring true. Is it possible that it did not ring true because
>you were not aware of it, and therefore couldn't make your case?
I made my statements assuming that a manager/leader defined their values
before making any decisions. Any time they were to make a decision, they
would reference their goals and values. If a behaviour did not support
their values and goals, they do other things.
I think that it is critical to know where the leverage point is in the
system. What behaviours will support the leader's values while giving the
maximum result. If a leader knows where the leverage point is, they can
sacrifice some decisions to give them the opportunity to make ones with
more leverage.
I read that Lincoln got elected in one of the most corrupt conventionsin
history. He got elected by assuming the presuppositions of the people who
elected him. I think that he remembered what his values were, so that when
he was in a position of control, the presidency, he introduced trojan
horses with the intent to abolish slavery. If he didn't accept the
presuppositions of the people voting and spoke directly from his values,
tirading against slavery, I doubt he would have been elected. I think it
is possible that when he introduced these trojan horses, a few people
might have wondered about Lincoln, but if I remember correctly, he did not
say, "get rid of slavery," he said "blacks are people." The trojan horse
is that if people accept this, it gets easier to combine this with
"hurting people is wrong." What he did is really complicated. Remarkable,
actually. He kept things very, very implicit.
I guess Lincoln lied a lot while keeping his values in mind. I think
Schindler, the guy who saved a lot of Jews, did this also. That's why we
think they are great leaders.
>I'm also reminded at this point of Richard Rorty's quotation:
>"Uncovering the presuppositions of those who think they have none is one
>of the principal means by which philosophers find new issues to debate."
>Get a free life!
I never said wrote that some people operate without presuppositions. They
do operate with presuppositions. Whether or not it is useful to have those
presuppositions in or out of awareness depends on what the leader's goals
are. In the example you stated above, if the goal was to keep face with
other people, then yes, it's useful to be aware of the suppositions one
operates from. But there's no guarantee that when a leader knows the
suppositions they are operating from they will choose suppositions that
are consistent with their higher ups. If they aren't in a position of
leverage, maybe it's better for them to not be aware of their
suppositions. At least they can eat and feed their family. The alternative
is to leave from conflict with higher ups after making decisions that
operate from values that conflict with the values of their higher ups.
>Irrelevant to who?
I'm sorry. It depends on the leader's goals. I made that statement with MY
goals in mind. I also made that statement assuming that the leader had
defined a set of values to operate from.
>YES, I AGREE. THE ALCOHOLIC NEEDS TO ADMIT TO BEING ONE IF THE BEHAVIOR
>IS GOING TO CHANGE, AND AFTER HAVING DONE SO, SOMETHING MORE NEEDS TO BE
>DONE.
That's only one way of changing behaviour. "The alcoholic" contains many
"presuppositions" in itself. Each of those presuppositions has their own
resulting behaviour. AA gets people to admint that they "are" alcoholics I
think because they don't have a way to get people to change their
identity. What would a person be if they weren't an alcoholic?
What I learned is that NOT DOING X implies X. If the person doesn't want
to be an alcoholic, that assumes that being an alcoholic.
>WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT.
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
I think it depends on what the leaders goals are. Whether or not decisions
have leverage depends on if the leader knows where the critical leverage
points in the system are. It's easy to make decisions that have no
leverage.
-- Andrew Moreno amoreno@cyberspace.org