JONATHAN:
> Elephant is right [IN RANT ABOUT "REFUTE" AND "REJECT"], and I am humbled.
However, let's not let my mistake be
> interpreted as a concession on any of the substantive points.
ELEPHANT:
No need - you made a complete concession on all the points at issue in your
last post if I remember right, a concession which I accepted. Ah yes, here
it is:
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.
ELEPHANT:
No need for you to conceed twice Jonathan, once will do for the purposes of
progress. Harping on about it will only annoy. Or perhaps you mean to
retract the concession? Oh well.
> JONATHAN
>>> 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:
> I don't see an alternative. I'm not going to go looking for some elusive
> mystical reality. After hundreds of thousands of years on earth, man has yet
> to make much progress on that front!
ELEPHANT:
You have me all confused. Puzzled. You don't see any alternative to what
exactly? To calling inventions inventions? Or to being a contortionist and
denying that inventions are inventions? But surely there is a clear
alternative to both, to wit, the other. And calling inventions "inventions"
looks like a pretty workable programme to me. An invention is an invention
- look I just said it! (And the sky didn't fall in.) What's the big problem
Jonathan?
What's all this about hundreds of thousands of years and our failure to
discover any mystic reality? What are you thinking, Jonathan, that
discovering mystic reality requires some super fine microscope, or a Nasa
robotic expedition? Er, excuse me, isn't this forum devoted to discussing
Robert M. Pirsig, who discovered mystic reality while trying to teach a
bunch of kids English Literature? Myself, I discovered it one day while
staring out the window of a train somewhere near Worcester. (Mind you, I
had been reading Plato since Birmingham, I mean let's not credit British
Rail with the *whole* conversion.) Several people I know encountered it
while they were making tea. Doing the dishes is also a popular experimental
method. Picnic by river banks are also popular, in the summer months,
unless it rains. Or BBQ's by the pebbly beach in Wales. Sit on a rock.
Have silent encounters with silkies. Whatever.
There was a period when the done thing was to take LSD and form a rock band,
but lets not repeat the mistakes of an earlier generation unecessarily.
You have this idea of mystic reality as a really rare and elusive kind of
thing. That must be why you haven't found it.
Bit forthright of you to claim to speak on behalf of the entire human race
since the dawn of time though.... perhaps this meglamaniac phase will pass.
JONATHAN:
> No thanks - I'll stick with the reality
> I am familiar with. The mystics may call this imaginary reality, or "virtual"
> reality, but until they can show me the "REAL" thing, I'll just call it
> reality, or perhaps empirical reality i.e. the reality of my everyday
> experience.
ELEPHANT:
Now theres the rub. If you were making that choice in full knowledge of
what you were choosing and of the power of your own decisions over your
world, we could call you an extremely enlightened empiricist. But this
world first can't be confirmed quite yet, as you still appear to be a mite
confused about everyday experience. You apparently have the idea that what
we *directly* and pre-theoretically encounter ("everyday experience")
includes atoms and other objects. Well no, it doesn't. Take resposibility
for your own referents.
> JONATHAN
>>> The alternative approach (that I prefer) is to embrace everyday reality
>>> as our own child.
>>
>
> This is my concession to the fact that I have no external reference to
> validate my world view, and recognize that reality sometimes needs revision -
> or as I put it before:
> "When things get lost in a hiss of irrational babble, we must never forget to
> consider the possibility that it is our own rationality that is out of tune.
> we must never forget to consider the possibility that it is our own
> rationality that is out of tune."
>
>> 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.
>>
JONATHAN:
> This isn't where our argument is.
ELEPHANT:
That's just me being obscure - it is where our argument is but I didn't get
that accross successfully the first time. Strike one. My point is that you
want your invented world to get pole position on the Reality grid. I've
news: the existence of the movie requires the existence of real life.
>
>
>>> ELEPHANT:
>>>> I'm sorry Jonathan. If atoms make choices then they are self-aware.. . .
>
>> JONATHAN:
>>> Awareness and self-awareness are not the same. . . .
>
> I will illustrate the difference with Elephant's own statement:
> ELEPHANT (27 March 2001)
> BTW there's more to mind than making choices - there's creating the stuff to
> choose between as well. (maybe this is where our enitire disagreement
> lies).
ELEPHANT:
Just to interject that I don't know why I'm being quoted at myself, as I
haven't anywhere denied that there is a crucial difference between awareness
and self-awareness. But these two states are just that: states. We aren't
talking about *states* of awareness, we are talking about *units* of
awareness (Me: people, you: Atoms). Now it happens that I think units of
awareness are defined as such only through their self-awareness. That they
also have states of awareness which do not correspond to self-awareness is
besides the point here. It is important elsewhere in that is by cultivating
such states that one progresses morally and spiritually, but that doesn't
happen to be relevant to the discussion we are having just now.
JONATHAN:
> As I understand it, the awareness of the atom is in making choices. Since the
> atom and its choices are not SELF-defining, it is not useful to call it
> self-awareness. The only self-aware identity would be one that defines its own
> existence.
ELEPHANT:
It is precisely because an atoms "choices" are not self-defining that they
are not choices at all.
>> 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...).
>>
JONATHAN:
> Elephant you really should learn how to use Occam's Razor. IMO the FREE of
> "freewill" and the SELF of "self-awareness" both have to go. Atoms are aware -
> they have will. It is the extra baggage makes it all look ridiculous.
ELEPHANT:
I really don't think freewill is 'extra baggage' when it comes to the
definition of consciousness in the human, do you? If it is extraneous to
atoms and makes their consciousness look ridiculous, that's just because
their consciousness *is* ridiculous.
>
>> ELEPHANT:
>>>> . . .remembering to add RMP's kid-glove quotation
>>> marks, [snip] It is *as if* atoms
>>> prefer, and there's an end on it.
>>
>
>> JONATHAN:
>>> 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.
>
> JONATHAN
> If you were being true to your claims, you would say that nature
> behaves *as if* it contains aware atoms.
>
>> Yours is a trully constructive
>> suggestion, and I accept it forthwith, pausing only to collect your graceful
>> admission that atoms are not aware.
>
> Now that you accept my "trully constructive" repositioning of *as if*, I will
> apply Occam's Razor one again, and remove the *as if* altogether:
> "nature contains aware atoms"
ELEPHANT:
WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's no Ockhams razor, that's a mad slasher
movie. Can you give me *ANY* justification for that bizare switchback? I'm
open mouthed with astonishment.
To my recollection, Ockhams razor does not instruct the learned metaphysical
barber to cut out any inconvieniant facts at will and for no good cause. No,
you see on my memory of it, it instructs us to get rid of anything we can't
justify as absolutely necessary.
"Do not multiply beyond necessity."
How can you call "necessary" a unilateral decision to assert the "as if" one
second and deny it the next? Jonathan, forgive me if I think your bizare
zig-zags rather less than "necessary". In Ockhams barber shop they'd be the
first for the chop, as might you be, for taking his name in vain.
Refutation Refusation. Ockham Schmockham.
... as Woody Allen says.
Elephant
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