Quoting Ham Priday <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: To Gav Ham wrote:
> You misunderstand me. By "stuff of the universe" I do not mean the finite > objects and events experienced. I mean the essence of reality itself. I > used "stuff" in the same sense that Robert Lanza did in a recent article > entitled "A New Theory of the Universe": > > "Space and time are not stuff that can be brought back to the laboratory in > a marmalade jar for analysis. In fact, space and time fall into the > province of biology-of animal sense perception-not of physics. They are > properties of the mind, of the language by which we human beings and animals > represent things to ourselves. Physicists venture beyond the scope of their > science-beyond the limits of material phenomena and law-when they try to > assign physical, mathematical, or other qualities to space and time." > > Although he was talking about the dimensions that frame experiential > existence, I see space and time as not essentially different than matter. > In fact, when you add energy (or force) to the matter-time-space trilogy, > you've got all the quantitative constituents of physical reality, except for > one: conscious awareness. If it were not for awareness, there could be no > existence. As I said before, existence is a dichotomy of sensible awareness > and objective otherness. All other differentiation -- forms, measurements, > properties, etc. -- are intellectual constructs which fit your term > "ideation". Hi Ham, As always you supply food for thought. Here is an excerpt from a recent article about the ideas of Pinker. I wonder if they fit with your own. Offhand I would say you and Pinker have something in common. "In a veritable bookshelf of recently published volumes, he (Pinker) has argued for what might be called a soft innatism: a theory of mind that holds that certain concepts or ways of thinking are hardwired into our brains at birth. "We all have, according to Mr. Pinker, ways of expressing place and movement, ways of distinguishing actions in time, and ways of expressing causal relationships. Not everybody in the world expresses these things in the same way. But just about everybody has some way of expressing them. Mr. Pinker's view is therefore different from those who believe in a set of absolute innate ideas: the notion that, not only do we have a concept of, say, killing, but we all have, whatever our language, a word for "kill." Instead of this kind of absolutism, he holds that we all have "a cast of basic concepts." These are far more abstract than killing, eating, or fishing. Instead, they are ideas about relationships. "This cast of basic concepts thus includes notions of things happening (not anything happening in particular; rather, the idea of happening). We all contrast, Mr. Pinker holds, coming from going; human from nonhuman, animate from inanimate. We cause things to happen; we prevent things from happening. These are the most general kinds of states, actions, and conditions, and these are what Mr. Pinker avers "to be the major words in a language of thought." " Maybe I get it wrong but it seems the division of subject/object in your metaphysics would be one of items in Pinker's "cast of basic concepts" if not indeed the primary concept. With best regards, Platt P.S. The full article is at: http://www.nysun.com/article/62490?page_no=2 ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
