Most of us have our mantras, Frances, and one of yours is revolves around your conviction that all "stuff exists to evolve in the direction of a good end goal, to the fit benefit of stuff." You firmly believe "this action of goodness and goalness" obtains in the world.
To many of us this notion seems so profoundly unfounded, we can't take it seriously at all. It reminds us of those quasi mystical thinkers who feel a boulder rolling down a mountain has "goal" -- to get to the bottom. In their most lubricious moments they'll say it "wants" to get there. A second Frances mantra cites "global accounts". You say, "The notional and nominal approaches as accounts of some particular stuff in the world are however useful and needed, but they clearly fail as global accounts." Your notion of "global accounts" is -- like your notion of "goodness" -- never made clear. And I have little idea of what you have in mind when you (evidently) attribute to me a notional or nominal account. I believe in notional entities -- feelings, attitudes, images, beliefs -- but I also believe in Michael's "raw material" world. I don't believe in relations, categories, qualities, properties, and other abstractions as entities in that raw material world. You also say, "the initial "desire" for truth made on the part of thinkers for example, cannot be accounted for objectively by logic alone." "Accounted for" how? I'm certainly a curious guy, and I enjoyed science when I was in school because I liked seeing "explanations" that chemistry and physics offered about repeated observations all of us make. I myself never thought of this as a "desire for truth", only for a satisfaction of curiosity. And I'm not sure I always want to know "the truth" anyway. I have two children. Suppose "the truth is" that shortly after I die something awful will happen to both of them, something unavoidable. Do you think I want to "know" that now? Giving you specific arguments has never worked, Frances; you always ignore them. One argument I concocted and submitted that I admit I'm fond of suggested that the existence of "relations" as entities "out there" entails dizzying absurdities. If relations are entities, then each one is "related" to every other entity anywhere. But then THOSE relations are entities. Which means THEY are also related to each other entity. And then THOSE entities are relatedb&ad silly infinitum. I presume you would think of each blade of grass that existed in the raw material world in Cleopatra's day as an entity. Then each one of those blades must related to every other blade that ever existed, indeed to each grain of sand that ever existed. Do you feel no silliness in your reification of relations, in your belief that each one is literally a "thing" out there? ************** You're invited to Hollywood's biggest party: Get Oscars updates, red carpet pics and more at Moviefone. (http://movies.aol.com/oscars-academy-awards?ncid=emlcntusmovi00000001)
