File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9805, message 156


Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 22:38:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Another try


Hi Tobin,

We missed you!

In response to Carol, you wrote:

>Also I'd like to offer another example of the causal power of an absence:
>ignorance.  What we don't know can cause us to do things.

I still don't see what is of *ontological* significance here.
Epistemologically significant yes, but ontological I don't get.  I mean,
just as our thinking something ought not to be confused with the reality of
its existence or non-existence, so, it would seem, our *not* thinking
something ought not to be so confused.  Now, perhaps I am making a category
error here, in confusing the reality (or not) of the object of thought with
the reality (or not) of the thought itself, but even corrected, the
existence of the thought doesn't imply the existence of the *lack* of the
thought.  All *kinds* of things happen, especially in our minds, but are we
to count every twist and turn of our consciousness -- and, more to the
point, every twist and turn that our consciousness *doesn't take -- as a
metaphysical entity?  If all the things that I didn't think yesterday are to
count as real, or, to put it differently, if reasons are not just causes,
but -- which is not the same thing -- ontological entities, then how ought
we to understand the concept of the epistemic fallacy? 

[Please forgive my tone!  I'm not frustrated with *you*, I'm frustrated with
what seems like a whacky idea -- which, to make matters worse, I don't
understand.)

R.



     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005