10 M. McGovern
reliance on g to maintain the value of the collective product, a reliance that could lead
to further crises (Figure 1).
It is an open question whether the collective credit or intelligence C is sustainable
or apposite to the situation faced, or whether a fresh start should be made. So far, a
“same-as-was-usual” ploy has been the favoured response for both the collective
credit and unintelligence problems of the global financial crisis. However, history
indicates a marked and lasting reduction in credits and debits along with insolvencies
at some stage in any true recovery, a repositioning of ideas and attitudes and new
judgments of “creditworthiness “ and “intelligence”.
5 Conclusion
The approach of Hegel is commonly cast in terms such as “Thesis, Antithesis and
Synthesis”. Some identified “thing”
13
is associated with a different one resulting in
some new thing. Often the preference is to choose “the competing opposite” as the
antithesis but the method is wider. One or more “complementary differents” may be
used as in the vector example. The process whereby synthesis is achieved is aufhe-
ben,
14
a term little used or, arguably, understood in English.
Two examples illustrate something of the many usages, and some of the potential
problems if “unintelligence” were to be used simply as a competitive antithesis:
─ The arguments of Marx and others cast a thesis (Labour, a projection of direct
human effort) and antithesis (Kapital, an alternate projection) in competitive op-
position, despite their mutual interdependence in production, consumption and
societies. The posited struggle between them has coloured much history, and
for the revolutionary aufheben became a process of achieving dominance given
competing interests or theses.
─ Bernanke demonstrates an allegiance to a thesis of rationality (preferencing a
particular projection of analytical thinking) and a discounting of “irrationality”
(including of such things as opportunism). He and other current (but not some
past) central bankers profess an ongoing commitment to monetary rules to
change behavior, “intelligent” behavior in the sense of Pfeifer and Scheier.
Whether such commitments are sufficient to the tasks at hand or a source of col-
lective unintelligence is a point of current debate.
Whatever the merits of chosen ideas, practical implementations can demonstrate
much collective unintelligence. Interpretation of influences as competing opposites is
but one interpretation, one of arguments in an idiomatically two-vector scalar product
tradition. Using triple products could enrich our dialogues and representations.
─ Production could become the product of land, labour and capital variously com-
bined “co-operatively” to yield scalar and vector product outcomes.
13
Such as an entity, attribute, position or projection, for example.
14
Aufheben is a rich word with a range of interpretations. Briefly, it contains the idea of build-
ing up while breaking down (as in Schumpter’s “creative destruction”), the idea of maintain-
ing some things while changing others (as evident in the “diversity-compliance tradeoff”
casting of intelligence by Pfeifer and Scheier), and the idea of opposition and differences to
be resolved. The concept deserves renewed attention.