On Sep 17, 2009, at 10:46 PM, russell standish wrote:
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:53:19PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Wait a minute! They cannot call it a dilusion because "dilusion"
presupposes a state of affairs that IS -- i.e., a reality.
Yes, I would imagine that the people shouting illusion or delusion
do assume
some different sort of reality. That was mostly my point - the term is
ill defined, and not of much practical use AFAICS, except for fueling
endless philosophical debates like this one.
Right. I realized that as Glen points out this discussion -- as so
many do -- got side-tracked into the narrow alley of defending or
"attacking" a single rather silly claim "reality exists". Here is how
I would put my claim:
"Reality is not -- and cannot be -- what people take to be real."
On Sep 17, 2009, at 10:06 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Well, I think so (emoticon for nervous smile).
How can you even write to me without presupposing my existence. And
as Holt points out, the route to pointing out that I am just a
figment of your imagination requires the reality of something called
an imagination. Holt argued "Mind here" was a more complex
statement than "world there" because the former presupposes the
latter but not the reverse. Contra Descartes, I am not aware of a
mind, I am aware of a world. Only after some heavy lifting can I
separate a mind out from the rest of the world. I mean, which do
you think a baby discovers first: his world or his mind?
This all seems like so much dualistic flabber-jabber to me. i.e. these
folks presuppose an objective material world and then count it as an
argument in their favor that "you" can't have an disagreement with
"them" without entering into such a world. As the baby example
reveals. What does it say about the underlying point of view that one
presumes that it is possible for one to be discovered before the
other. In fact, interdependence -- characterized as dependent arising
-- is the only explanation that makes any sense at all to me.
On Sep 17, 2009, at 9:57 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
Well, you already know my position on reducibility, namely that it's
a mistaken quest. Everything -- other than whatever turns out to be
primitive, if indeed anything turns out to be primitive -- is
explainable. That is, we will eventually figure out how it is
implemented.
How can you explain something without taking into account everything
that might affect it? And as things are affected (cause happens)
across scales and types, how could you hope to isolate "anything"? The
only way that this reading could be correct is if there indeed did
turn out to be a primitive, which is impossible. So, we'll never
figure any of this out to complete satisfaction-- thank god.
-Miles
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