This is http://www.essayz.com/a8606102.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %TABOO NTH ORDER REFLEXIVITY 860610 To participants in the pro-objectivity collusion reflexive perceptions are taboo because in reflexive perceptions there is little distance between the observer and the observed; both may be one, the same. In objective perceptions and relationships there is a clear distinction between the observer and the observed, and it is by maintaining that distinction that bias is presumably avoided. It follows that reflexive perceptions and relationships are biased and unreliable; they lead to unreliable "knowledge" which should not be trusted. People who trust such unreliable forms of knowledge are unreliable people and should not be trusted. Reliable people should not have anything to do with such unreliable people. People who engage in and show respect for reflexive relationships are not worthy of trust or respect. People who know about and tolerate reflexive relationships in others are not worthy of trust and respect. A community within which people reciprocally know about each other's reflexive relationships and perceptions, and reflect positively upon each other's reflexivity shows total disregard for the importance of maintaining distance between observer and observed---such a community has nothing in common with unbiased scientists who avoid bias by faithfulness to the discipline of objectivity. There is no point wasting time trying to talk to such people who put their trust in unreliable subjective considerations. They have turned their back on true knowledge which is reliable, sure, proven correct - beyond all doubt. Such people can not see how foolish their behavior is, they can not see themselves objectively and without bias. If they would only think about how foolish their trusting subjective insights is, they could turn to reliable objective ways of knowing for sure when you are behaving reliably in objective ways, and when you are slipping into unreliable, non-objective, reflexive ways of trying to gain knowledge. But then, it is not everybody who is as smart as scientists are. Scientists are smart enough to be sure of themselves in their superior ways of knowing everything which can be known. They know for sure that their way of knowing is superior to the non-objective way that non-scientists presume to know. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================