Dear Joao,
Your point is well taken! My failure was to
point out that my 'rant' was against those that would claim that dualism can
never be a viable alternative, especially to a
Numbers-are-all-that-exists-monism. Thank you for pointing out that
such is called Pythagorianism.
OTOH, I see a failure in most discussions
of Platonism in that nowhere is the concept of Becoming considered to be
meaningful. I am trying, unsuccessfully it seems, to argue that it is a mistake
to consider "Being" as fundamental and that any form of Becoming is mere
illusion. We can use the launguage of Fixed points to show that Beingness, that
which is is immutable, can be faithfully identified as fixed points in a
space(?) of Becoming. Platonia should be taken as that ultimate level of
Existence where all forms of Becoming - not Being! - are fixed points, some kind
of unique and irriducible Category of Automorphisms, and not Existence
in-itself.
My words are ill-posed here, I
apologize.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: In defense of Dualism (typos
corrected)
snip Dear SPK
Though I entirely agree with what you state above, I take issue with your
characterization of "Platonism" as some form of mathematical monism.
If you had called "Pythagorianism" to the doctrine that "only numbers
exist" you would most likely be correct. Platonism, however, is very
definitely a form of ontological dualism: Platonists never deny the
existence of the physical world, though they insist that it exists as
a corrupted copy of the world of forms, that one holding the "true"
reality. It is one think to reject the false, and another one to
deny its existence! Sorry but this is not a pedantic point.
In other words: in all you say above you argue as a true Platonist,
(only one that does not know he is one)!
[SPK]
Consciousness seems to be more of a functional relationship between the
Physical and the Mental, the Outside and the Inside, as Chalmer's
states. When the two dual aspects are taken to the ultimate level of
Existence in-itself, the distinction between the two vanishes. Russell
saw this long ago, he denoted it as "neutral monism". It is too bad that
he made the mistake of excluding non-well founded sets from
consideration. If that ultimate level of Existence, as
you put it, was as accessible to us as the world of
(mathematical) forms is to our minds, than I would take it as an
indication that we (our sould) would had already migrated back to it in
old platonic parlance. Till than dualism seems quite unavoidable.
Kindly,
-Joao
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