Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 10:50:59 -0600
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-keynes.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: BHA: Santa, God, kneeling



Thank you for all your responses.  I still would like to
argue for the reality of Santa, along the following lines:


Are children afraid of Santa or of the concept of Santa?
My answer would be: they are afraid of Santa.


I am not convinced that the referent to the term "Santa" is
a set of cultural practices.  These practices create Santa,
they create something which is real (causally efficacious)
and emergent from these practices themselves.


I concede that as such an emergent being Santa is rather
inert, and one will not miss much if one reduces Santa to
the practices which create him.  Marxian labor-value and
capital (which is nothing but value in motion) is a much
more strongly emergent being, it grows and measures itself
and does many things which are far from the intentions of
the individuals who relate to each other through the
capitalist market.  One will lose much more if one reduces
capital to the practices of workers and capitalists, than if
one reduces Santa to the practices of parents, priests, and
advertisers.  Perhaps this means that also ontologically
Santa's emergence is half-baked.

Hans.


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