Heidegger

—– Original Message —–
From: “Jan Straathof”

>What did I ever say that suggested or implied that human being is a mere
>artefact like a physical object in the natural sciences? The claim to which
>I replied with polls was that the US was guilty of slaughtering, murdering,
>raping, dispossessing, and imposing an ongoing tyranny in Iraq. That is not
>an ontological claim but a factical one, and therefore to respond to such a
>claim with factical studies is hardly mistaking the ontological for the
>factical. I neither claimed nor implied that poll results reveal human
>being
>at a philosophical level. But it does reveal human being on the factical
>level required to address said factical claim.

Anthony, the distinction between the ontical and the ontological is
theoretical and not practical. The ontical (factical) only becomes
meaningful against the background of an (tacit or explicit) ontological
perspective (i.e. Weltanschauung). Every interpretation of the ontical
is based on an certain ontological understanding, there are no ontics
without an ontology. Although one can separate the ontological from
the ontical on a theoretical level, one can not make this separation on
the practical level of doing philosophy or in common life, which means
that the ontical (factical) is not ontologically neutral. By using polls as
ontical evidence for X, you betray your ontological commitment i.e. to
a positivist naturalist ontology.

=================
That cannot possibly be right according to Heidegger’s own explication of
how ontology grounds science. He doesn’t say that scientific calculation
itself betrays a commitment to positivist ontology, but only that the
treatment of scientific/calculative thinking as philosophically primordial
betrays such. It is therefore perfectly appropriate to conduct scientific
studies and polls on human beings, as long as these are not treated as an
analysis of Being of beings - and I never treated them that way. Human being
can show itself *scientifically* too - otherwise, anthropology and sociology
would not be sciences based on empirical data.
=================

>In order to make that criticism of my appeal to those polls in answer to
>said claim (above), you would have to maintain that a more mixed research
>methodology embedded in a context of cross-cultural comparisons would
>reveal
>that when the Iraqi psyche is subjected to ongoing slaughter, murder, rape,
>ruthless dispossession, and tyranny, then in a choice between very good,
>quite good, quite bad, very bad, and “difficult to say,” it chooses the
>first two in describing quality of life. I would be very interested to see
>how you would make that case.

That’s simple. Let’s assume a cross-cultural comparisons of the quality
of life was conducted also and at the same time with the same methods
in say Syria, Israel, Egypt, India, China etc. and the same results as in
Iraq
were found there too, then the significance and explanatory power of the
Iraqi polls could not be ascribed to U.S. actions and interventions, other
variables must then be operating.

========================
The polls were not meant to show that the “good” ratings of quality of life
was due to the US, but rather that the ascription of ongoing slaughter,
murder, rape, ruthless dispossession, and tyranny to the US is highly
unlikely. So in order to maintain your critique with a cross-cultural
comparison, you would have to conduct similar polls in countries where
slaughter, murder, rape, dispossession, and tyranny are occuring to a degree
similar to what is ALLEGED in Iraq, with the expected result being that they
would also rate their quality of life in the “good” range.
========================

>Jan, on the very next day I responded to these questions in your 17-10-2003
>post by quoting from the survey itself, as follows:
>
>http://www.soca.ecu.edu.au/pipermail/heidegger/2003q4/018020.html
>
>I received no reply from you to the above at the time, and yet now you
>simply repeat an identical objection.

I didn’t reply for obvious reasons, because your additional info did not
basically refute any of my overall criticism, i.e. the criteria of internal
and external validity were not met.

A cooperation rate of 97% means nothing if we don’t know if incentives
were given.

=======================
What “incentives” do you suspect were given that caused people to raise
their quality of life rating into the “good” range while surrounded by
slaughter, murder, rape, dispossession, and tyranny to the degree alleged?
And in lieu of any evidence of such incentives, is this objection anything
more than than an empty hypothetical, especially when multiple polls from
different organizations yield similar results?
=======================

A maximum error etc. of ±2.7% means nothing either, it is a
statistically chosen ratio of confidence which could apply for studies in
e.g. consumer behavior (the quality of toothpaste) in Western countries,
but not for antropological surveys about phenomena as well-being, trust
in the future, security etc.

=======================
If the maximum range of error were that large, we should not get anything
close to consistent results among various polls on quality of life. But we
do.
=======================

And also the given sample sizes are far too
low for these kinds of studies, for surveys of consumer preferences a
sample size of ca. 1000 respondent can do (limited time frame for short
product-marketing cicles), but for deep and broad studies of the quality
of life of whole countries, scientists use much larger samples (check the
literature).

=======================
Again, the consistent results among multiple polls on quality of life belie
this criticism. If the sample size were too small to yield a statistically
accurate result, we shouuld get widely divergent results between different
polls.
=======================

Futher, Baghdad is not representative for the whole of Iraq, only the view
of urban residents is checked.

=======================
Similar results from the Fall 2005 ABC poll with this methodology:

“This analysis examines regions where different groups
predominate, based primarily on data from the February 2004 Iraq poll.
Predominantly Shiite Arab provinces were identified as Basra, Kerbala,
Missan, Najaf, Qadissiyah and Wassit, all in the South. Predominantly Sunni
Arab provinces are Anbar, Diyala, Ninewa and Salah Al-Din. Mixed provinces
are Babil, Baghdad and Tameem, and predominantly Kurdish provinces in the
North are Dokuhk, Erbil and Suleymaniya.”

Similarly, the Feb. 2004 Oxford Research National poll cited above included
Anbar, Baghdad, Basra, Diyala, Dohuk, Erbil, Kerbala, Missan, Muthanna,
Ninewa, Qadissiyah, Suleymaniya, Tameem, Thi-Qar, Wassit, and Salah Al-Din.
=======================

We heard nothing of important variables as
level of education, socio-economical status, religion, tribal and family
relations.

=======================
They analyzed those factors, but I didn’t want spend hours typing in data
from entire polls. For example, in the poll of the Balkh province in
Afghanistan:

“I would now like you to consider all aspects of life in Afghanistan today.
How satisfied are you personally with the current situation in Afghanistan?

MEN VS. WOMEN
Very satisfied: Men 43%, women 61%
Somewhat satisfied: men 43%, women 23%
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied: men 8%, women 14%
Goes down from there.

WORKING VS. JOB SEEKERS VS. NOT WORKING
Very satisfied: 46/63/63
Somewhat satisfied: 42/33/19
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied: 10/4/14
Goes down from there

The Iraqi polls have analyses of other factors, including regional and
religious affiliation. I can type them all in if you wish, or just email you
the polls in PDF format as attachments.
========================

It is however said that the poll was held ‘in the privacy of the
respondent’s own home’. Now this is the real banger. Everyone who has
any background knowledge of Middle-Eastern societies and family
relations will know that nobody, no stranger or visitor, will enter the
home if the *man of the house* is not present to welcome them. This
implies that during the polls the man of the house was definitely present.
It is also common knowledge that neither the woman nor the children of
the family will openly disagree with the opinion of the man of the house,
and certainly not to strangers or visitors. This implies that the
reliability
of the age and gender variables of polls conducted in the privacy of the
respondent’s own home is nihil.

=========================
As you can see from the Afghan poll above, the opinions of women do not
uniformly follow those of men in these polls. That same poll did a break
down of age into five categories: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, and 55+.
Here’s the of the quality of life info broken down by those age groups:

Very satisfied: 50/58/48/61/43
Somewhat satisfied: 30/31/35/35/50
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied: 20/9/14/3/4
It does down from there.

But even assuming your worst - that women in the home will not disagree with
the opinion of the man in a poll - do you think that most MEN would rate
their quality of life in the “good” range when an occupying force subjects
their fellow compatriots (and their families) to ongoing slaughter, murder,
rape, dispossession, and tyranny?
=========================

>There were other responses in the same polls which were much more
>”unacceptable” than the ones about quality of life, such as that they were
>openly suspicuous about the motives of their tyrants (specifically, the US
>and Britain), and that they wanted US forces to leave as soon as possible,
>which was specified to mean as soon as Iraq had a self-sufficient police
>force and government. So your above worry is unwarranted.

Positive or negative correlations between the scorings on different
questions of a poll need factor analysis before any conclusions can
be drawn.

=========================
What a catch-22: If I cite poll results that support my view, you say that
the results could be skewed according to what is “socially acceptable,” but
when I cite results from the same polls which hardly comply with what the
current “tyrants” would like to accept, you say very generally that other
“factors” need to be analyzed? This is as vague and general as Bob’s
attribution of these results to “complexity”.
=========================

>The question in all three polls specifically asked whether life was better
>than “before the war in Spring 2003″.

How accurate do you think responses to such questions are ? Think of
yourself and your life for a moment. Everybody reinterprets his’ or here’s
past life and experiences constantly, a person’s memory is not a static but
a very dynamic entity. Anthony, this is common psychology: nobody has
an objective view of the past, or do you think those people keep a diary
to check how their life was 2 or 10 years ago ? And even so, did you ever
reread your own past writings or testimonies, what impression do they
make on you now, do you still understand them the way you understood
them then ?

=========================
Jan, we talking about allegations of nationwide slaughter, murder, rape,
ruthless dispossession, and ongoing tyranny! You would have to say that the
70% of 25 million people are dynamically re-interpreting such hell
comparitively into the “better” range, and that if they had just kept a
diary they would then realize that ongoing slaughter, murder, rape, ruthless
dispossession, and tyrany is actually in the “worse” range?! I can’t believe
you are this unconscious of the lengths to which you are going.
=========================

>Again, in order to make that criticism, you would have to diagnose with
>Stockholm (and such) the vast majorities of two entire nations - one 25
>million and another of 30 million - *repeatedly* over the number of years
>these polls were done. I have never heard any scientist even attempt to
>make
>such a claim. Your objections are incredibly stretched and therefore have
>the distinct feel of being constructed in order to justify a political
>viewpoint.

No, i don’t have to diagnose the existence of these sources of bias
because they are conceived as universal psycho-social phenomena,
there is an immense batch of literature on this, starting from WOII.
Or are you implying that the Iraqi people are somehow fundamently
different in their social and mental make-up ?

=========================
Please cite any literature supporting the plausibility of ascribing such
syndromes to anywhere near 70% of 25 million people over a period of several
years such that they would rate quality of life in the “good” range in the
face of ongoing widespread slaughter, murder, rape, dispossession, and
tyranny by foreign occupiers.

Jan, come now.
=========================

Posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback