今天去看了電影「頭號公敵」,裡面有句話讓我挺感動,頭號通緝犯約翰‧狄林傑對著他那自覺出身貧寒的女友這麼說:
「People only see where you from, but they don't know the most important thing is where you go to.(原文大概是這樣)」(人們只看到妳的出身,但卻不知道,最重要的是你會往哪去。)
維根斯坦的老師之一叫Frege,是個邏輯學家。Frege哲學上有句名言:To understand a word is to understand a sentence。維根斯坦把它擴充為 To understand a sentence is to understand a language。後來甚至變成 To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life。這意思是說,你不可能了解一個東西,除非你了解這個東西所屬的範疇。或者換句話說,一個東西唯有在它所屬的世界才有可能被理解。
2. 我知道 Erving Goffman寫了幾本社會學經典,比方說:《Asylums,1961》講到精神病人的「機構化」與「污名化」問題。比方說《Stigma:notes of the management of spoiled identity,1963》講到污名化的形成與社會成員因應策略;社會成員必須持續對所謂「正常」做出回應,避免污名化的危險。
3. 另外 Goffman更早之前(1959)還有一本《The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life》,講到關於「自我呈現」。Goffman認為,世界是異質的、流動的,同樣的人事物在不同狀況下,將會有不同的意義與不同對應方式;世界就像劇場,生活於是就像表演那樣,有不同的表演策略;觀眾定義角色,角色「應觀眾要求」而演出,但角色同時也企圖透過表演來影響觀眾的印象,台前台後有不同演出。在 Goffman看來,所有社會關係幾乎都能歸結為一種戲劇。
6. 今天林醫師所提供的那篇文章,裏面引了Norman Sartorius的一句話,這人是當代很有名的一位精神科醫師,國際上很活躍,身兼多職,是世界衛生組織在精神衛生方面的負責人,迄今一直在努力推動「反精神病污名化運動」。他兩三年前寫了一本書叫《Fighting for Mental Health. A Personal View》,劍橋大學出版社出版,似乎也是在談這類問題。
10. 舉個例來講,看過Pedro Almodovar的「Talk to Her」(悄悄跟她說)這部電影的人,我看很少有人不被主角的癡迷所感動。可是,主角幹了什麼偉大的事呢?就「實證」意義來講,主角是個男護士,負責照顧一個年輕貌美的植物人,結果竟然強暴了她,因為懷孕而東窗事發。這樣一件事如果讓台灣媒體來報導,肯定會講得很難聽,主角將會被貼上各種病態標籤,然後可能會送到精神科來「治療」。
20. 羅素說他小時候常想著什麼是心靈(mind)或物質(matter)等等這些問題,他奶奶很擔心,以為這小孩腦袋不正常,奶奶對他說:“乖孫啊,What is mind? No matter! What is matter? Never mind!” 這段英文很難翻譯,因為它是一種雙關語,意思就是說,什麼是心靈,那不重要啦!什麼是物質?不用管它啦!
54. 討論課主題:What does it mean to have a “science of the individual”? ( 擁有“對於某個人事物的科學”是什麼意思?)by 陳興正 2007. 6. 5.
55. To have a ‘science of the individual’ is to claim a scientific study of ‘particular or private’ things, striving for direct insight into their unique nature.
56. In a famous address in 1894, W. Windelband (1980) introduced the terms ‘nomothetic’ to refer to the kind of science that dealt with the general and ‘idiographic’ to refer to the one that dealt with the particular.
These two ways of acquiring scientific knowledge differ not only in their objects of study but also in aims and methods. The former seeks to establish general laws by using analysis, quantification and explanation, while the latter is concerned with the uniqueness of individual things by ‘understanding.’ This methodological dichotomy has often been discussed in the study of personality, history and social psychology.
57. The origins of idiographic psychology lie in 19th century Germany, as part of a general swing away from classicism (represented by objectivity, positivism, materialism and mechanism) towards romanticism (represented by subjectivity, intuitionism, and vitalism) A central them was the claim that the social sciences were distinct from the natural sciences and demanded different methods, notably that of Verstehen understanding).
58. The scientific study of the individual has been thought problematical on the grounds that the individual constitutes a unique pattern which is more than the sum of component parts and not fully represented by scores on dimensional tests. see Valentine, 1982, p. 164.
59. We explain nature but we understand human beings.----W. Dilthey (1937), Historik.
60. Knowledge involves life, not only reason.---- M. J. Inwood (1995).
61. Traditionally, an individual cannot be the object of scientific study because of its uniqueness, which is considered by many as elusive, unsystematic and hence incapable of investigation. On the other hand, whether the “general laws” are ever relevant to the individual remains dubious.
62. Wittgenstein’s “private language” argument: Is private language possible?
63. To make the ‘idiographic approach’ possible, we need to presuppose that human beings can empathize with each other (Ebmeier, 1987). In other word, we should have a special ability to “share people’s state of mind” and hence understand their behavior. This special ability is at the basis of the method of Verstehen.
64. Verstehen is a kind of hermeneutic understanding, involving intuition, empathic feeling and direct non-intellectual knowing. Holt puts it thus: Verstehen, i.e., “an artist’s quest for truth, differs from a scientist’s being a striving not for strict verisimilitude but for allusive illumination (Valentine, 1982: 178).”
65. Verstehen demands empathic, intuitive, interpretative understanding while nomothetic approach is preoccupied with prediction and explanation based on general causal statements (Valentine, 1982, p. 165).
That is, we use empathic understanding to identify the motives and interpret the social significance of human behavior. Its power is much dependent on the amount and quality of interpreters’ experience and their introspective capacity.
66. Comte was the first to establish what may be termed “the postulate of Verstehen” for sociological research. According to him, empirical generalizations about human behaviour are not valid unless they are in accord with our knowledge of human nature. His theory is that we can understand the behaviour of human beings by being able to share their “state of mind”. see Abel, 1953, p. 677.
67. Maclver 也認為我們必須有一套有別於自然科學的方法來研究 social causation or human behaviour. He calls this process “imaginative reconstruction”.
68. Verstehen is a hermeneutic tool and source of intuition for the formation of causal hypotheses in social and human sciences.
69. Bhaskar has argued that social explanation is both causal and interpretative. He accepts “hermeneutic understanding” as a legitimate method for arriving at “causal generative mechanism” in human sciences (Collier, 1994: 167). However, the logical relationship between causal explanation and the testing of hypotheses still remains controversial.
70. A science of the individual should not be mistaken as a “methodological individualism," which stems from a general assumption that the wholes must be resolved into simple units to be understood (Collier, 1994).
71. It is not a branch of the science of “whole”. Actually, as Windelband pointed out, these two cognitive methods remain independent and juxtaposed in the total synthesis of knowledge (Windelband, 1980: 183). The world is stratified. Science within this world is hence divided into different kinds which are mutually irreducible (Bhaskar, 1997).
72. It is plausible to say that the science of the individual is one of the two faces of the world. Without this, science is nothing more than a technique. A scientist needs to be an artist in theory construction and making discoveries because science involves life not only reason (Inwood, 1995: 201).
73. psychoanalytic methodology has been described as causal explanation or hermeneutic understanding. This methodological dichotomy has been introduced into psychopathology by Karl Jaspers.
74. For Jaspers, psychoanalysis is an hermeneutic discipline mistaking itself for a causal science. (But is presented by Freud as a causal science similar to the natural sciences.)
75. Empathetic understanding (“as if” understanding) is a method modeled by Jaspers on the hermeneutic disciplines, philosophy and history. Such a kind of understanding can never be complete or final. Consequently, contrary interpretations are often equally plausible.
77. Llewelyn & Kelly (1980) have also argued the case for a “new paradigm” in psychology, i.e., a non-essentialist psychology, which will account adequately for the social construction of individuality.
They criticize contemporary psychology for relying on a biological conception of the individual as an organism physically separated from its environment. This view is essentialist in that it takes for granted the pre-social existence of the individual. See Clifford & Frosh (1982), p. 267.
78. Clifford & Frosh (1982), believes that psychology must begin neither with the individual nor with society, but with their interface, language. The construction of the individual is seen as a gradual process of differentiation and organization in which the production of meaning is central. pp. 267, 269.
79. Clifford & Frosh (1982): the meaning of a signifier is not defined by its relation to a real object or to an idea in the mind of the speaker, but by its relation to other signifiers. They believe that their “new paradigm” transcends the long and bitter opposition between “interpretative” and “experimental” psychologies. See p. 268.
80. Verstehen is not a method of verification. It starts with some hunch or intuition. See Abel, 1953, p. 685.
81. In every concrete individual, there is a uniqueness that defies all formulation. We can feel the touch of it and recognize its taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking, as the case may be, but we can give no ultimate account of it, and have in the end simply to admire the Creator. Willam James 1912。
Many thanks for your comments. In my view, people here in Taiwan are too "reasonable" to reason with. To this I mean they always know how to act and how to talk to meet different purpose. On the table is one thing, under the table is another. They act not on the basis of what they perceive as moral or beautiful; rather, they act on their need. People lack a sense of self-respect and hence they cannot respct others and discipline themselves where there is no law.
I see what you mean by "reasonable"; but I believe that what metters is not the ability to reason but the will to act, to act rightly of course. Like you, I also believe that there are many good persons with good behaviours; that's why I am still willing to live and to strive rather than committing a suicide. But it is the existence of misconduct or even evil that necessitates morality; namely, morality takes shape at least in part in response to evil. It is just like the fact that what medicine faces is various kinds of disordered state rather than a healthy one.
Most importantly, I always believe that there is no such thing as medical ethics; what exists is simply some basic moralities and virtues of humanity which all of us, as a human being, MUST share with each other that forms the foudation of a civilized society in its every aspects. To put this claim in a mild form: there would be no such thing as medical ethics unless people are willing to act on this basis of humanity; and then it might be possible for them to be "more" moral on that basis in medical situations. In other words, if we pay no attention to things which are violating the basic law of humanity; it would make little sense to stress on some kind of virtues which are far more difficult to achieve than the basic one.
I am happy to meet you in person too, if you feel that I am such a person, crude but sincere, who is worthy of your time. I will be in Taipei on 8 Aug, 14-15 Aug, 11-12 September. But you should be warned in advance of my "unsociability"; I am not good at talking as I have little valuable to say. In the past 25 years, I have written many articles or notes, acdemic or non-academic, but most of them-- more than 95%-- I keep to myself as I cannot convince myself they have some value and are worthy of being published or even being shared with any others.