On 24 Sep 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Bruno Marchal
Being a pragmatist (and an engineer), I believe what works or makes
the best sense.
I am basically trying to understand the relationship between
Platonism and modern science. So it's not either/or, its both/and.
As an extreme conservative, I could argue that platonism = modern
(human and exact) science. This makes me say, provocatively, that
science has ceased to be modern 1500 years ago, as it is based since
on a methodological fertile idea, but a dead end as a dogma, that
there is a *primitive* physical reality. That is why very plausibly,
we have stopped to make progress in the human sciences, and notably on
the mind-body problem, since that time. That might perhaps explain the
general inhumanity of humans (shoah, rwanda, communism, prohibition,
etc.). Democracy has been a progress, but a tiny one, very fragile,
and in peril today.
Bruno
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-24, 08:58:12
Subject: Re: Potential definitions--Re: Re: What is 'Existence'?
On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:26, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
>
> Potential definitions :
>
> To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within
> spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing
> such as a brain or object
But "exists" has simple meaning, when applied on what you assume to
exist primitively. The words "objective", "physically", "being",
"spacetime" "spatial", "location", "time", "brain", "object" have no
simple meaning that everyone can take for granted, when working on th
TOE search, or when trying to get some light on the mind body problem.
I thought you were a Platonist, even if a Leibnizian one, but now it
seems you believe in primitive physical notion, like spacetime, so it
becomes hard to figure out what are your sharable assumptions.
>
> To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically
> be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial
> location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc.
>
> Thus brain exists, mind inheres.
?
I don't see the logic leading to brain exist, from mind inhere.
Brain exists, but with comp it can't be a primitive existence, and so
"brain exists" is a pattern that we have to explain from an ontology
with not assumed brain.
>
> An agent = An inherent control and observation center.
>
> A self = an agent
>
> Actual = to exist
>
> Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to
> observe or control it.
That can make sense in some context, but not when you search a theory
*explaining* or enlightening the big picture. You need a criterion of
existence for what you take as primitive, and then you can defined the
many different sorts of existence which can be reduced to the
primitive existence.
But you betrayed yourself by insisting that we don't mix theology and
science, where I think that the separation of theology and science is
very big mistake, even if easily explainable by Darwin and human short
term interests.
I cannot convince you by reason, on something about which you decided
to abandon reason.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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