hey there guy!
you know a funny thing about this is that it was a woman, jane loevinger i think, who introduced the notion of perspectival ranking. and ever since men have been beating their heads in trying to make sense out of this. it looks like ken intends to make perspectives the key notion in his philosophy (as prefigured in the excerpts), at least on the finite side of the street. and he seems to be having some trouble with this as well.
the concall you're referring to was a great introduction to this. ken has also given another example of taking a 3rd perspective--when he asks his friend 'do you think sally loves me?' in this case, sally becomes the 3rd person object of study, although it's not a scientific study. for it to become that, he would have to ask a number of people, including, say, billy bob, who might say "i don't think so: i've only seen her once at the local bar." so the lowest common denominator, scientific study might actually be less reliable than asking a trusted friend.
so, what about what you think i think ken thinks about you? thinking is a way of taking a perspective, right? so you're taking a perspective of my perspective of ken's perspective, i.e. a 3rd perspective appropriate for conducting a scientific investigation of ken's perspective on you.
.i agree: this can be very confusing, but it's fun to play with from time to time. we could, for example, define ordinary, orange, lowest common denominator science to be what is possible with a 3rd perspective, and compare that with what is possible with a green, 4th perspective (required for zones 2 and 4, i suspect) science, and with a 2nd tier, 5th perspective science.
in case i wasn't clear, my bare bones perspective is obviously in need of improvement. the important thing for now, i feel, is to see how the 8 zones neatly classify the major methodologies practice by humanity in the past, and thereby suggests how we might progress to an integral meta-methodology.
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