Thracian Bard wrote:
I still must reserve the possibility that such an actor may be Hamlet; and
that you and I and all of us reading this may, in fact, be Hamlet, and
Caesar, and Gandhi, and GOD. And there may indeed be a level of Quality
inherent in the actor and us admitting this fact.
ELEPHANT:
Ok. *May* be. But as a matter of supremely high-quality-fact I am *not*
Gandhi or Caesar or God, and it is also an imposibility for a historical
figure known as Hamlet (if he existed at all) to play himself in a
theatrical production conncocted by an englishman years after his death.
But I think we are getting off the point. The point being that atoms are in
just the same category as characters in a play. As characters in a play
they are dependant for their being on the being of the consciousness which
conceives them, just as Hamlet cannot exist without Shakespeare. "Hamlet
thinks x ...." is a peice of literature appreciation that will always be
shorthand for "Shakespeare writes/allows us to beleive that Hamlet thinks x
...." - and this kind of shorthand operation is revealing. It is "as if"
Hamlet were a living breathing human being with his own internal dramas
(because shakespeare is proficient at his craft) - it is *not* the case that
Hamlet *is* a living breathing human being with his own internal dramas -
for if that were so we'd face some pretty vexing (and ridiculous) questions
about where the souls and bodies of the actors go off to, when Hamlet comes
into being and the actors disappear - about whether Hamlet can be in more
than one theatre at a time, about whether social services are legally
obliged to take Hamlet into protective custody, and so on.
Parrallel nonsense questions pile in when you start with the "atoms prefer"
business. It is *as if* atoms prefer, because atomic scientists are
proficient at their craft, in just the same way that Shakespeare is
proficient at his. And don't you forget whose craft we are talking about
here - because it sure as hell isn't the atoms. When was the last time an
atom told you how to calibrate an quark detector?
Anyway,
Thanks for the kind words Bard.
P.E.
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