Date: Thu, 02 May 1996 18:04:14 -0500 (CDT) From: Quetzil Castaneda <Quetzil-AT-UH.EDU> Subject: Re: 'Actual past' At 10:44 AM 5/2/96 +0100, you wrote: Colin I can accept your understanding of this position as idealism since you want to insist that "practice theories" are idealist; and i can also accept your refusal to comprehend the emphasis on "practice" as the locus of mediation between idea and material as something that upsets the simple binary opposition that has weighed so heavily on the minds of western thought/thinkers. for you the reality of practice/praxis as necessarily duplicitous and distinct from idealism and materialism is non existent. Indeed it is as not existent as the quarks that you suggest killed humans at hiroshima. and, certainly the existence of quarks is a totally irrelevant to the lives and deaths of those of that died/survived as practice is for uyou. actually, much less so, since this theoretical outlook is something that you are actively engaged in a kind of "error" that must be combated in intellectual debate. those of hiroshima have no interest in whetehr it was a quark a split neutron, two "heavier cousins" of the quark or some other subatomic matter that killed/maimed them. actually the reality of the bomb that destroyed that city was its bomb-iness, if you will. and, i imagine that if you were to speak with survivors of the bomb, i wonder how much interest they would show for quarks or your concern about the real reality of quarks; or for your argument to them that instead of worrying about the loss of loved ones, they should instead be concerned with whether or not there is actually some kind of sub sub quark matter that is what really caused the corporeal scars on a survivor versus radiation.... >No, it's not only those questions, I want to know How? and Why?. Because the >question of the existence of quarks can NOT be separated form those you >pose. That is, who is going to pay the bill for something they believe to be >real if it is only fictional? Also, of course the existence of quarks, >despite the fact that the Japanese at Hiroshima had no knowledge of them, >had a devastating effect upon them. So I think they might have some interest >in whether they are real or not. > > >Thanks, > > > >-------------------------------------------------------- > >Colin Wight >Department of International Politics >University of Wales, Aberystwyth >Aberystwyth >SY23 3DA > >-------------------------------------------------------- > >
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