From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 11 2003 - 20:57:32 GMT
Scott,
I understand what our differences are (I think), but, given that, I still
don't understand a lot of the stuff on the whole mystery.
Granted, I'm begging the question, which you are likewise doing. I think
the best way to describe our differences is that you have faith in the
"Real (non)-Thing" to help with the explanation of the mystery of the Many
and the One and I have faith that science will one day get to the bottom of
causal chains. Another way to describe this difference is to say that I
leave science to deal with causation and such and leave self-creation off
on another side and you want to twine the two together. The "Many and the
One" anomaly has led you to lose faith in science's ability to deal with it
and led you back to metaphysics to deal with it, which is also where you
deal with self-transformation.
To punch up these differences, the example of consciousness. Most analytic
philosophers don't talk much about consciousness anymore because of the
difficulty in describing what it is. They've left it off as one of those
problems that is best redescribed in language where there's no problem.
For instance, on my reading of Pirsig, Pirsig redescribes consciousness
into the basic structure of reality with his shift into a value vocabulary.
He gives "choice" to the very basic stratum of existence (I argued this in
a post from a long time ago, "Free Will, Determinism, and Consciousness"
(8/20/02)). Since we can easily redescribe everything as having
consciousness, I don't think there's any much need to mull over the
problems consciousness. As I see it, there's only a problem when you think
that we need one over-arching vocabulary to describe everything into: a
metaphysics. I prefer to have to vocabularies, one for rocks and another
for how to live my life. As I see it, the move back to metaphysics is the
move back to metanarratives, a single vocabulary to describe things,
whether or not you're ironic.
But, as you say, the move back to metaphysics wasn't initiated by the need
for an arch-vocabulary, it was initiated by lost faith in science's ability
to deal with rocks (or more specifically bodies). Thus, my saying that you
want to twine self-creation with explanations of causation might be wrong.
Its still certainly plausible to have multiple vocabularies while losing
faith in science. But I don't see consciousness as having to enter into
science's range.
Matt
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