343. Verb extraction

In the previous item in this blog I summarized my plea to look at things as processes rather than objects, for example concerning identity, being, meaning, knowledge, truth, systems, etc. For truth, for example, the process is that of debate on the basis of 'warranted assertibility'. In ethics, it is debate on the basis of Aristotelian ' phronesis', practical wisdom, with storytelling, taking into account the contingencies of position and circumstance. 

I am interested, in particular, in dynamics, change. I have just returned fom a stay in Japan to give two lectures. One was on the dynamics of knowledge, applied to the university, at the university of Yamaguchi, where I used the 'cycle of discovery', discussed elsewhere in this blog.

My host was professor Tadashi Saito, professor of community development. One of the projects with his students was what he called 'verb extraction'.  That means that when dealing with objects, such as locations, buildings, fixtures, amenities, tools, etc. one looks not only at the nouns, but beyond that, at the verbs, i.e. processes of use underlying them. A deserted house has lost meaning when it no longer harbors the life of inhabitants.

That seems useful more generally. Concerning nature, one should look at processes of evolution, birth and decay, the circularity of seasons, response to human action such as pollution.

In health care, when looking at a patient, a doctor should look not only at the illness but should extract the verbs of his/her life behind the illness.

Treatment of immigrants requires verb extraction in looking behind their appearance, of race, color, and dress, at the lives and practices behind them. It is a familiar phenomenon that when working together with immigrants, being involved in a shared practice of work, discrimination soon subsides. 

I also recall the plea of professor Gjalt de Graaf, at the Free University of Amsterdam, to see the role of citizens in politics not as 'positioning', where once in every four or five years citizens vote for a political party on the basis of its political programme in whose development the citizen was not involved, and is subsequently not involved in the political compromises of coalition formation and subsequent execution of policy. He argued, instead, for involving citizens in the process of policy formation and execution, on the local level, concerning local facilities and amenities, by way of citizen councils with members who are locally elected or selected by lottery among willing candidates, in what is called a 'commons'. Here, I will not discuss the feasibility and viability of such an arrangement. I will do that in a later item in this blog. Slavoi Žižek claimed that it will not work, and his criticism calls for a answer. 

From  Annemiek  Stoopendaal, who is working on oversight in health care, in the Netherlands, I also hear that in present  theory of democracy there is a movement from voting-oriented theory to a dialogic theory, in ' deliberative democracy'. I quote her: 'Storytelling and the evolution of experience, meanings and symbols can contribute to justification'.

That connects, I think, with the process view of truth indicated above, in discussing the warrant of assertions, and the process view of ethics, in the practical wisdom of phronesis.

In science, one should not just look at methods, but at how they are used, and at the processes of debate, competition, criticism, getting published, the use and misuse of citations, etc.

The implication is not that underlying process are or should always be perspicacious. Sometimes, in deliberation temporary secrecy is needed for it to succeed. People may demand privacy concerning the goings on in their minds. But that does not deny the need for extracting the verbs to understand what is going on. It is just that this may not always be possible or desirable.