Ach! I've been here several months without encountering this annoyance, but
now Jonathan has finally gone and done it: he's used "refute" for "reject".
You can't beleive how much that winds me up. It's all very well for
politicians and other dumb suckers, but it we want to maintain the english
language in a condition likely to permit the continuance of knowledge
culture and commmon or garden reason we must resist these visigoths at the
gate! Desist!
Refute: demonstrate the error of some claim.
Reject: exhibit one's disapproval of some claim.
Since we will be dealing with fair dolops of error, disapproval, and
demonstration in roughly equal proportions, and wanting all the time to know
which of the three we are dealing with, let's please stick to the
dictionary. It's for you own good.
(God but we could do with our own match for the academie francaise!)
(Partly) Synthetic rage over, to the issue at hand.
> From: "Jonathan B. Marder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 19:32:13 +0300
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: MD Re: Atomic awareness
>
> Hi Roger, Elephant, Platt and all,
>
> Well folks, I now realize that we have a serious and deep agreement here
> that may be a fault line that runs right through our little community.
>
> ELEPHANT:
>> Check Roger's reply - he read your meaning
>> just as I read it. Yes you responded to my question for Platt - and
>> you did so
>> by telling me that my objection to Platt had a motivation which it
>> certainly
>> did not have:
>>
>
> Having rechecked E's and R's postings, I think that there has been no
> misunderstanding at all. WE DO NOT AGREE.
>
>>> ELEPHANT had written:
>>> Jonathan, you are quite wrong to suppose that my objection to
> conscious atoms
>>> arises from the thought that events happen objectively. Precisely
> the reverse.
>
> Let me first address this less serious difference in approach. Elephant
> is taking the mystical approach.
> "Atoms" aren't reality itself - they're an invention of the human mind,
> so it would be plain silly to give them attributes like "awareness". I
> myself tend to take an almost opposite approach. I agree that atoms are
> an invention of the human mind, but maintain that this and other similar
> inventions ARE reality.
ELEPHANT:
Er, how do you manage that? You must be quite a good contortionist. I
mean, normally we say that the stuff that's invented is invented, don't we?
I do.
JONATHAN:
> We conceive from what we perceive and we
> perceive what we conceive. In this act of perception/conception, we
> REALIZE our reality.
> The mystical approach is to suspect everyday reality as a false god, or
> as trickery (MAYA).
> The alternative approach (that I prefer) is to embrace everyday reality
> as our own child.
ELEPHANT:
I'm all for owning up to our paternity. Talk about this everyday reality
reminds me of my paper "Iris Murdoch's everyday metaphysical entities"
(http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol4/index.html). To make the point that Murdoch
and I both draw from Plato: there are degrees of reality. Fictional
characters are quite real (in some degree), but that doesn't make them real
in the way that *the real thing* is. This is also a thought from some paper
on Buddhism I posted a link too a while back. All the world's a stage,
*really* a stage, but appears like the real thing to all the best method
actors.
> ELEPHANT:
>> I'm sorry Jonathan. If atoms make choices then they are self-aware.
> The
>> mere notion of a nebulous universal (non-self_) consciousness in which
> atoms
>> participate is patently insufficient to support the claim that a
> particular
>> atom z would prefer to do x today after doing y yesterday. This
> choosing
>> atom is an atom which will need cogito ergo sum and and a bill of
> rights and
>> the whole business.
JONATHAN:
> I refute this.
[arggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!]
> Awareness and self-awareness are not the same. My stomach
> seems to be aware of its needs, but I don't think it has much sense of
> self. Much less an amoeba, or a bacterium. However, since I am not a
> stomach, an amoeba, a bacterium or an atom, I cannot talk about their
> SELF awareness, only their awareness.
ELEPHANT:
It is quite true that awareness and self-awareness are not the same, but
this is not the question. The question is whether the awareness that goes
with *freewill* (eg of an atom) is self-awareness. And my verdict is: yes
it is. This is a claim that you reject Jonathan, not one that you refute.
If my claim needs support look at the whole library of christian theology
saying that it is as individual self-aware souls that we are granted
freewill. The freewill and the self-awareness are two sides of the same
coin. *Souls* (Psyche) have freewill, not atoms (unless they have souls as
well...).
BTW Jonathan, do you *usually* think that stomachs are not things *we* are
aware of but rather sentient beings in their own right, or have you just
gone off your rocker on a temporary basis?
ELEPHANT:
>> But if you aren't talking about individual choices and preferences but
>> instead about atoms that "choose" and "prefer" as part of some
> universal
>> body or world picture, remembering to add RMP's kid-glove quotation
> marks, I
>> simply have no quarrel with you or you with I. It is *as if* atoms
> prefer,
>> and there's an end on it.
JONATHAN:
> Now we are on to the serious part of the disagreement. I have no problem
> about inserting *as if*, but I have a serious problem with where you put
> it. If you were being true to your claims, you would say that nature
> behaves *as if* it contains aware atoms. However, you put the *as if* on
> the awareness and not on the atoms themselves.
> This appears to legitimize the atoms (real, objective), and delegitimize
> atomic awareness (imaginary, unreal, subjective).
ELEPHANT:
I have no trouble at all with moving that "as if" to a position which makes
the fictionality clearer in every way. Yours is a trully constructive
suggestion, and I accept it forthwith, pausing only to collect your graceful
admission that atoms are not aware.
That done there is little more to say on the thread. Except, cryptically...
"Don't forget Mia."
Elephant
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