Stephen, I don't know about you all, but I find it impossible - just impossible - to keep up with the hundreds of FW posts that accumulate over a few days, particularly if I am to pay any attention and take seriously the stuff that FW-ers are asking me to think about.
Arthur, would it be reasonable to set a limit on how many posts a subscriber can send in a given 24-hour period - like 3? (I think a filter can be set up on the server.) what do you all think? arthur, Sometimes people just have to respond, and respond again when the urge is there. Just as in any conversation if you wait too long to give voice to your thoughts....well the urge passes and something else grabs your attention. The worst case is that people worry that they are posting too often and soon the conversation becomes too polite and dries up. So let's let the good times roll. If you find yourself flooded with emails, just store them for a quiet day or delete them. I believe you can receive the emails in digest form so they all come contained in one email that you can pick and choose from. I will check on this option. arthur -----Original Message----- From: Stephen Straker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 12:51 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; Keith Hudson Subject: Re: [Futurework] RE: But where's the mind? Keith, Arthur, & and all, >> "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to >> entertain a thought without accepting it." (Aristotle) well said! excellent grounding for the *future* of our intellectual *work*! > I wouldn't be comfortable with pure agnosticism because > (for me) this would deprive life of meaning and I would > feel lonely. I'm a sort of believer-agnostic. I believe > that there is more significance in the universe than is > implied by science alone. Without this feeling of > significance, then anything goes. Although the above is stated in a personal idiom, I've chosen to reply in an impersonal mode exactly because I don't wish anything I say to be taken personally. I suspect - or hypothesize - that there is a *connection* between holding, on the one hand that "there is more significance in the universe than what is implied by science alone" and holding, on the other, that science at its best consists in elucidations of biochemical (neurochemical) processes and evolutionary explanations (of behavior and of biochemical make-up). That is, it may be *just because* the significance is elsewhere - not part of science proper - that science itself can be so reductive and, with respect to human life anyway, so impoverished, that science itself is valued chiefly for what it can technically *do* (cure this, fix that) rather than for what genuine understanding it can (or cannot) provide. *Part* of what makes Aristotle so interesting - *and* so acceptable to intellectuals in the centuries before the metaphysical terrorism (!) of Galileo and Hobbes took cultural control - is that Aristotle (& Aristotelians) take it as obvious that things which are of "significance in the universe" are for that reason necessarily *part of* - included in - any science worthy of the name, perhaps even central to any such putative science. So, for example, an Aristotle-like critique of contemporary neuroscience and evolutionary psychology would, I believe, argue that it is exactly because contemporary science has no idea whatsoever of how to give an account of "mind" or consciousness - as Jerry Fodor was quoted as noting - that these sciences are impoverished and quite possibly bankrupt, barking up the wrong tree altogether. The very existence of a "mind/body problem" is a scandal, evidence in itself that the science which allows such a problem to be posed must be importantly somehow on the wrong track. None of this is to say that post-Galilean science is impotent. Indeed its technical power is advertised as its basic strength. And so, of course, the neurosciences will discover, elucidate, and underwrite all sorts of stuff that *works* - beta-blockers, etc. But such technical prowess is not evidence of truth or understanding. After all, we can make a long list of theories that are false yet "work" (including, eg, geocentric astronomy and Newtonian physics). > I think that something > worthwhile believing in will shape up in due course and > indeed will be necessary if society is ever to hold itself > together -- and, hopefully, reformulate. We are living in > a strange inter-regnum period for the moment. I'm beginning to think that there are intellectuals in every generation who think that they/we are in such a time of passage. But indeed this may be right. Recent posts about recent findings in genetics and neurophysiology implying considerably more plasticity than heretofore supposed may indeed indicate a future science that is more able to comprehend the universe and our place in it than contemporary science does. Hmmmph. This was meant to be a brief intervention... I don't know about you all, but I find it impossible - just impossible - to keep up with the hundreds of FW posts that accumulate over a few days, particularly if I am to pay any attention and take seriously the stuff that FW-ers are asking me to think about. Arthur, would it be reasonable to set a limit on how many posts a subscriber can send in a given 24-hour period - like 3? (I think a filter can be set up on the server.) what do you all think? best wishes, Stephen Straker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Vancouver, B.C. [Outgoing mail scanned by Norton AntiVirus] _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
