Re: Why and How

[Hong Lam Vu <vuh000@goofy.zdv.Uni-Mainz.de>]

Hi ba'c Vie^.t,

>     Thanks to Anh Vu Hong Lam for contributions. Actually, if you divide
> the society into many layers, actually the WHY of the lower layer used
> to be the HOW of the higher layer.
> 

Very interesting. I think it depends on the underlying rationality
which serves as the frame for one's thought, that whether a question can
be interpreted as a HOW or WHY or WHAT question, or HOW and WHY and WHAT
are no more distinguished from each other. Have you haerd about "formal"
and "substantive" rationality? 


>     So I am not sure that there exists the ultimate WHY that belongs to the
> scholars as Anh Lam said. ( Remember I am not an ontologist, but rather a
> positivist as most of physicists).

In my positivistic view, there is no ultimate answer for a question. As a
western-style scientist, I _still_ remain a positivist. I'll be a
taoist-buddhist-whateverist only in case I chit-chat on philosophy as a
Hu? le^'u.

I've been talking about professionals, politicains, and ideologists, etc.
not as occupations, but roles. The same individuum can play different 
roles in different space-time. So I can play the role of a professional
and a theorist in this msg, but I also can play the role of a politician
in a "ddao to bu'a lo+'n" msg.

> Here I am concerned about the relative
> WHY, and the midle boss will have to have the HOW to report that low 
> level WHY to his supervisor.
> 

You have mentioned power. We all know the saying: Knowledge is power. I
would like to analyze HOW (or WHY, it depends on the perspective or
rationality choiced) knowledge becomes power.

Power, capital, and knowledge are all media and therefore they are "middle
goals". For exemple, you need knowledge to gain power, or you need capital
to gain knowledge, or you need power to gain capital, and so on. So in the
case of these media, you hardly can say what is the ultimate knowledge, or
power, or capital.

As I'm talking about knowledge in relation to power and capital, i.e.
knowledge as a medium, I don't focus on knowledge of BEING, but on the one
of DOING. I see 3 types of knowledge of doing:

- to know how to do (technological kn.)
- to know what to do ( teleological kn.)
- to know why to do ("reasoning", "justific" kn. - my own ad hoc
terminology)

As I observed, those who possess the reasoning kn. can monopolize the
leadership only in primitive societies. These societies value justific
kn. rather than the tele. and the techno. ones. In the evolution of
division of labor, the leadership tends to run over in the hand of those
who possess the techno. kn. It is so, because in the modern society with
high level of so-called functional differentiation, the technological
knowledge is valued higher than the others. But further functional
differentiation has a consequence that the "hierarchy" of types
of knowledge becomes more and more relative. The leadership is hencefore
"decentralized" and you can not say whether the leadership in a
"post-modern" society lies in the hand of technocrates or politicians or
shareholders if you still use the "black-white" logic.

More later,

La^m.

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