re: The Prince
I guess that my criticism of the medical profession stems from the presumption that it is free from interpretation. A lot of this probably has to do with the impact of certain legal issues upon the practice of medicine, but I think that it is also related to the belief and the desire for medicine to be a hard science - that is, for it to rest upon some foundation that is steadier than the social sciences, for it to be more objective, to be free from interpretation, which, it is assumed, is an expression of some kind of fallible subjectivity. [That somehow medicine is more real than law.] But I see medicine as first and foremost a social science, as a purely human activity that is primarily concerned with humans interacting with other humans. But this is totally understandable - Don't we want nothing more than to believe that we are dealing with a kind of certainty when our health and our lives are at stake? And aren't most people more than willing to engage in a quite a lot of self-deception in order to maintain that belief?
"There are instances where you have a faith - where you say "I believe" - and on the other hand this belief does not rest on the fact on which our ordinary everyday beliefs normally do rest." - Wittgenstein, Lectures on Religious Belief, p. 54.
At its simplest, this sentence is saying that we have different reasons for believing the things that we believe. [His belief in evolution has nothing to do with his belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, nor in his belief that it is raining outside.] But if we look closer, we might find that we have some peculiar reasons and/or explanations for our beliefs. For example, my belief that the antibiotics will kill my infection may have less to do with my knowledge of biology and chemistry and more to do with my desire for my doctors to be a part of a strange and mysterious system that has the power and the will to salvage my health. This could be called faith. And somewhere I hear Nietzsche lobbying in favor of the conclusion that our scientific beliefs are really just disguised leaps of faith. But I don't think this is quite right.
"There are instances where you have a faith - where you say "I believe" - and on the other hand this belief does not rest on the fact on which our ordinary everyday beliefs normally do rest." - Wittgenstein, Lectures on Religious Belief, p. 54.
At its simplest, this sentence is saying that we have different reasons for believing the things that we believe. [His belief in evolution has nothing to do with his belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, nor in his belief that it is raining outside.] But if we look closer, we might find that we have some peculiar reasons and/or explanations for our beliefs. For example, my belief that the antibiotics will kill my infection may have less to do with my knowledge of biology and chemistry and more to do with my desire for my doctors to be a part of a strange and mysterious system that has the power and the will to salvage my health. This could be called faith. And somewhere I hear Nietzsche lobbying in favor of the conclusion that our scientific beliefs are really just disguised leaps of faith. But I don't think this is quite right.
posted by Joel | 12:02 AM
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