As usual, Brad, I find we are right in tune on this subject... -PV
On Tue, 03 Jun 2003, "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Selma Singer wrote:
>
>> If one argues that mind has an existence of its own, why does it then
>> follow that min is unfettered by physical laws?
>[snip]
>
>The way I look at it, we don't understand too much
>of what's going on. You know: every scientific discovery
>increases the range of the things we know that
>we don't understand even more than it extende the range of the
>things we understand, etc.
>
>*NOW* -- I happen to think good arguments can be adduced
>why psycho-physics ("the mind is an epiphenomenon of
>the brain", etc.... is wrong-headed, not just more or
>less factually wrong -- i.e., it asks the wrong questions,
>so, no matter what the answers, we're scr-wed....).
>
>But, even if one accepts the misguided premises of the
>debate, ther seems to me to be a choice: sort of like
>the daytime nightmares some of us experienced in
>high school geometry trying to prove that the lumpenproposition
>on the left side of the equals sign was really identical to the
>lumpenproposition on the right side of the equals sign.
>One4 could start from the right side or from the left
>side (it was equally hopeless either way....).
>
>If you start from the right side -- i.e., the side which
>is RIGHT because God is a Thatcherite ---, then one
>has to explain human freedom from the assumption of
>universal physical determinism.
>
>If you start from the left side (the anarchistic side...),
>then you have to explain how human freedom can affect
>physical matter.
>
>Each project is, I propose, equally intractable. So....
>
>Why not consider starting from the side that opens
>opportunities for a creative human personal and social
>world, rather than from the side that closes down
>all opportunities?
>
>As Heraclitus said some 2500 years ago:
>
> So great is the extent of soul,
> that you will not find its boundary anywhere.
>
>Where's the mind? Heck: Where's Osama? Or, to
>be really concrete about it: Where's Saddam? (Answer:
>In the bush.)
>
>\brad mccormci
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