Hi Andie, (aka JKS), I've been reading a couple of Wittgenstein experts in regard to our discussion of realism. One expert is on language, and the other is on philosophy and neuroscience. So I'm parroting not creating here. Both books have been useful to me in helping me to conceptualize this arena. Realism has a lot of meaning to me because I've striven to be a realist visual artist. Secondarily I've used philosophy to help me understand what visual realism is. Just a little context for why realism matters to me.
I'm aware that the standard view of realism in philosophy is that reality is independent of reality. The world goes on after we die as it were. Rather than sit here and claim special knowledge and get in your face, what I rely upon here is the concept of mereological fallacy that Bennett and Hacker use in their book on Neuroscience, called Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Blackwell publishing, 2003. I'll quote a paragraph from the book to put this on a ground to debate if you want. page 73, "Mereology is the logic of part/whole relations. The neuroscientists' mistake of ascribing to the constituent parts of an animal attributes that logically apply only to the whole animal we shall call 'the mereological fallacy' in neuroscience. I am saying to characterize the mind as 'independent' of reality is a mereological fallacy. This is a residue of dualism where conceptually people continue to divide reality from it's wholeness due to the influence of dualism in understanding reality. For me of course the central issue is intellectual property. File sharing business clash in fundamental ways with Hollywood. Which brings in my sense of visual realism. What exactly is being torn apart in the Hollywood business model? Well it seems to me it's dualism at it's heart about intellectual property. Knowledge is a dynamic whole structure of a society in which exchange of information, conversation, goes back to a million years or more. And is a major debate in the sciences concerning what language means in terms of inheritance and culture. thanks Andie for a moment to discuss this, take care, Doyle
