[Bups-dis] Holistic understanding

[David Mitchell]

Luis: apologies for how long this response has taken, hopefully you can remember what you had previously said on this issue.
   
  Anyway, to clarify: I never meant to suggest that you could defend the idea of our relation to the world being holistic [what you call metaphysical holism MH] via the view that our knowledge of the world is holistic [your epistemological holism EH]. Indeed my initial contribution was not meant to be an ‘argument for’ holism at all, but rather an outline of an alternative view regarding the purpose of philosophy.
   
  In any case, I think the distinction between our understanding of reality and our actual, real relation to reality is deeply problematic. The reason for this is that our understanding is essentially constitute of our relation to reality in the first place, in which case there can’t be a ‘reality’ [in terms of a human relation to reality] that precedes some form [no matter how primitive] of understanding. Nevertheless we can still talk about forms of understanding that are more or less limited or one sided [for instance Christianity is a more developed form of understanding the world than say Voodoo, but is still limited in comparison to certain forms of philosophic understanding]. Of course then a wholly atomistic view of an essentially holistic reality would be limited, in comparison to a more holistic awareness. 
   
  To illustrate my point on this issue here’s another example: the case of someone buying a mortgage. In reality this persons decision is related to not only rational ‘economic’ considerations, but also to a whole web of social/political and psychological factors, e.g. a sense that owning your own house is socially expected, or, say, the desire to own as a psychological impulse. The question then is how we understand this person’s relation to their decision. The way this is done in [conventional] economics is to look solely at the rationalistic cost/benefit aspect of this decision, and ignore these other relations. Now, it is the case that all forms of understanding must in some way abstract from reality, and indeed that abstraction itself is both necessary and, at times, useful. However, whilst it might be problematic to do so, the more our understanding of this decision takes into account other relations [and becomes more holistic] the closer it comes to apprehending
 reality. The problem then is not the abstraction itself, but the assumption that the abstraction, as for instance in economics, effectively reveals the whole reality of the situation. My point is that if we want our understanding to come closer to apprehending this reality our understanding itself must attempt to be more holistic. As such, if we do indeed accept the holistic reality of this situation, I can’t see why or how we could really maintain a wholly atomistic understanding in relation to it.
   
  And this brings me onto another point you make about the possibility of ‘atomistic holism’. If the opposite is true of the world, that [the human relation to] reality is essentially atomistic then what sense would it make to have an understanding that was holistically structured? If reality is actually divisible into distinct ‘areas’ then not only would a holistic understanding be pointless, but it’s hard to see how it would even be possible. 
   
  I also wanted to address the other point you made about the inability of holism to account for change, but because of time this will have to wait for the moment.
   
  David

       
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