Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1998 03:04:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: BHA: detail


Hi all,

Thanks Michael for the emphasis on the material side of ideology.  I'm
mulling, still, over your and Colin's exchange.  

I was actually the one who used the term "memory" in connection with
Socrates, but, just to be picky, neither I nor Louis said that Socrates
"exists".  

Louis had said that Socrates is real, albeit non-existent.  I said that I
thought that it made more sense to think instead that Socrates *had been*
real, but that now that he no longer exists it is the memory of him, i.e.,
the concept, rather than he himself, the referent, that is real.  

[And, since I find myself on a bit of a roll here: I added that this example
highlights the issue of whether we are to think of x as being real in virtue
of it's present or past existence, or in virtue of its causal effects.
Clearly Socrates himself, being dead, has no causal effect, although the
memory of him does.  

It seemed to me that to say that Socrates is *at present* real, but that
Santa is not, when neither exists, and cannot, therefore, themselves be
causally efficacious, pointed to past or present existence as a condition
for being real.  Now, such a condition actually makes sense to me, but I
wouldn't know how to square it with the claim that "de-onts" are real.]  

R.



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