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This is a classic reductivist mind set mistake.

Posted by Timbo in Oz (A) on August 16, 2014 at 19:30:33

In Reply to: We've had that discussion before on thi sforum... posted by C.B. on August 16, 2014 at 18:19:42:

It just is NOT possible to separate my 'logical and educated' (?) - sight-reading, key recognition, ...... responses to music from my emotional responses.

Just because people have been educated to think that it is possible doesn't make it so.

Here's a quote from an article I've posted here at AA lots of times.

"To assume that the heart and the head can be separated is like assuming that the head and tale of a coin can be separated because they can be discussed or looked at separately."

For those who find that difficult here's the article. Just because it is focussed on management science does not reduced its total generality and truth.

""32

OBJECTIVITY?

Objectivity is a scientific ideal particularly sought by management scientists. Although its meaning is not clear, objectivity? is generally believed to be what Winnie the Pooh called a "GOOD THING". It is also believed to require the exclusion of ethical and moral judgements from inquiry and decision making.

Objectivity so conceived is not possible.

Most, if not all, scientific inquiry involves testing hypotheses or estimating the values of variables. These procedures necessarily entail balancing two types of error. In testing hypotheses these errors are{;) rejecting hypotheses when they are true{,} and accepting them when they are false.

Naturally we would like to minimise the probability of making them but unfortunately minimising one maximises the other. Therefore, setting these probabilities requires a judgement of the relative seriousness, hence value, of the two types of error. Researchers seldom make this judgement consciously; they usually set the probabilities at levels dictated by scientific convention. This attests not to their objectivity, but to their ignorance.

The choice of a way of estimating the value of a variable requires the evaluation of the relative importance, hence values, of underestimates and overestimates of the variable. Each estimating procedure contains a (usually implicit) judgement of the seriousness of the two possible types of error. Therefore, estimates cannot be made without a value judgement, however concealed it may be.

The most commonly used estimating procedures are said to be "unbiassed". The estimates they yield, however, are best only when errors of the same magnitude but of opposite sign are equally serious. This is a condition that I have virtually never found in the real world.

In testing hypotheses and estimating the values of variables, science equate unconsciously equates objectivity with unconsciousness of the value judgements.

The prevailing concept of objectivity is based on a distinction between ethical-moral man – who is believed to be emotional, involved and biassed – and scientific man – who is believed to be unemotional, uninvolved, and unbiassed. Objective decision-makers are expected to take their heads - not their hearts - into the workplace.

To assume that the heart and the head can be separated is like assuming that the head and tale of a coin can be separated because they can be discussed or looked at separately.

Objectivity does not consist of making only value-free judgements in conducting inquiries and making decisions. It consists of making only value-full judgements; the more extensive the values, the more objective the results. A determination is objective only if it holds for any values that those who can use it may have. For this reason objectivity is an ideal that can never be attained but can be continuously approached.

Objectivity cannot be approximated by an individual investigator or decision maker; it can be approached only by groups of individuals with diverse values. It is a property that cannot be approximated by individual scientists but can be by science taken as a system.

All this has an important implication for management. The values of all those affected by a decision, its stakeholders, should be taken into account in making that decision, but this cannot be done without involving them in the decision-making process. To deprive them of opportunities to participate in making decisions that affect them is to devalue them, and this, it seems to me, is immoral.

{sic - amoral too}

Managers have a moral obligation to all who can be affected by their decisions, not merely to those who pay for their services.

From - PP 123 – 125 of ‘Management in Small Doses' _ Russel L. Ackoff.
Wiley and Sons NY 1986
ISBN 0-471-84822-0 or
0-471-61765-2 (paperback)"

It is manifest to me that the implications for much of what passes for thinking around here at AA are deep, and will be ignored.

Warmest

Tim Bailey

Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger

Edits: 08/16/14

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