From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Jan 11 2003 - 04:55:44 GMT
Matt,
First, my compliments on rendering my views fairly and, for the most part,
accurately. This allows me to focus on two areas of disagreement. Here's the
main one, since this is what leads me back to metaphysics, and you not:
> One of the mystery's Scott is after is the mystery of how
> we abstract, how we detect similarities amoung particulars. However, I
> don't see how this is a problem.
It took me five years (well, with some interruptions) to see the problem. To
indicate how the problem is difficult to see, consider that this next
sentence:
> We have causal pressures (i.e.
> experience) and we begin to notice similarities in our experience.
begs the question: how do we (or anything) begin to notice similarities?
And so does this:
> We
> begin making distinctions between some of our experience, like
> differentiating between tables and lions.
You go on:
> I don't understand why we have
> to treat this as mysterious, particularly if we take the Darwinian turn,
> which is simply that our cognitive abilities have evolved.
My point is that *when* we see the problem here, *then* the Darwinian turn
shows itself to be valueless. Consciousness, or even sentience, *cannot*
evolve out of non-consciousness. To see the problem, take the normally
accepted view of how visual perception works: light bounces off an object,
stimulates the rods and cones in the eye, which stimulate nerve cells, and
(much complexity later) we say "I see the tree". The materialist is forced
to conclude that all that nerve cell agitation is the seeing of a tree. But
this is impossible, if one assumes that space and time are the context in
which all that is necessary to explain perception occurs.
To see this, ask how the excitation of one electron being hit by one photon
can have any *connection* to any other electron that is being, or has been
hit by another photon. For this to happen a signal must pass from the first
to the second, but that signal cannot carry any additional information than
that of a single photon. So unless we assume an electron has memory, and can
distinguish between one photon and another, there can be no greater
experience than that which an electron experiences on absorbing a photon (or
any other single interaction it can undergo, like being annihilated by a
positron.).
This argumentation applies at whatever level of granularity one tries to
think it through. One nerve cell excites others. But unless the nerve cell
itself has memory and is sentient, it cannot make distinctions or note
similarity. But how can it if it has parts (separated in space). One or more
of these parts must be responsible for holding a piece of the memory, but
then that piece has to be combined with others....
There is one out, and that is depending on quantum non-locality. But note
that doing so says that reality is fundamentally non-spatio-temporal, that
*all* spatio-temporal experience arises out of eternity. So teleology just
means causation in a different temporal direction, and Darwinism becomes
irrelevant.
Well, like I said, it took me five years of staring out this before it
became "obvious" to me.
The other response I wanted to make to your post is to say that I do not
have faith that a perfect, final vocabulary will ever arise, nor do I think
one is possible. My faith, in fact, is that all vocabularies are contingent,
but more (and this is what I mean by completing the linguistic turn), all
reality consists of vocabularies (speaking anagogically). In our current
vocabulary, I identify two phrases (each has many variants) that serve the
unique purpose of pointing out of any and all language games, and so I call
them dogma. One is that behind all vocabularies is Quality, or Love, or
Reason, or Creativity (positive versions), or Emptiness (negative version).
The capitals (and, yes, it shows privilege) indicate that in this use, they
(the positive ones, anyway) are related to the lower-case equivalents, but
emphasize that the lower-case equivalents are pale reflections of the Real
(non)-Thing. So these words serve to point out of this or any possible
language game to that which creates (loves, thinks) the language game, but
note that it does not point *to* anything comprehensible. The other dogma is
that all experience, which is to say, all form, comes in contradictory form
(DQ/SQ, etc.), and that the best word for capturing the nature of this form
is "word" (as opposed to "thing" or "object" or "process") [This needs
elaboration, but not now. Suffice it to say that all form is expressive].
And, as I mentioned a while back, I only allow dogmata that cannot be truly
understood, which is why my metaphysics is ironic.
One last comment, on nihilism and Rorty. As I said (it might have been in
the post that got lost), I consider that secularism, like Rorty's, leads to
nihilism if -- and only if -- one loses interest in any and all available
language games. In that case, the only alternative that I can see is to have
faith in the possibility of mystical transcendence. Just what that is, I
cannot say, but it is not the case that the mystic achieves the perfect
language game. More likely it would be learning to love them in their
imperfections, and in their infinite variety, which is only possible when
one has lost any attachment to a particular one.
- Scott
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