Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: general bias als Spannung zw. desinterested und interested desire

Kurzinhalt: general bias (allgemeines Vorurteil) als Spannung zw. common sense und theoretischenm Erfahrungsmuster; Spannung zw. Uneigennützem und eigennützem Streben

Textausschnitt: () it would seem that theoretical and common-sense patterns of knowing should complement one another. The dialectical tension between your interested and disinterested desire to know should bring about long-term progress. The dialectical tensions that stem from oppositions, however, all too easily turn into contradictions and gradually generate biases that steadily lead to decline and from decline to disorder and eventual breakdown. ()

The source of the problem of general bias is the tension between interested and disinterested knowing. The solution is not to disparage either pattern of knowing but to legitimate both patterns, and to understand precisely how they may actually complement one another. Put in its broadest context, common-sense knowers have to become long-term historical knowers if they are to understand how and why their own social order is operating the way it is. Common-sense knowers are not historical knowers; they are concerned with short-term problems, while historical knowers are trying to understand how a long series of past common-sense knowers and their respective communities have made history and handed it on in its present form.