From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 07:24:57 EDT
Subject: A Man of Property 



--part1_b0.39be5d9c.2c074809_boundary

In a message dated 29/05/2003 09:37:45 GMT Daylight Time, tgeorgescu-AT-home.nl 
writes:

Subj: RE: 
Date: 29/05/2003 09:37:45 GMT Daylight Time From: tgeorgescu-AT-home.nl (Tudor 
Georgescu) Sender: owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Reply-to: 
heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

The colour green and greenness could be said to be a characteristic property 
that defines the apparent individual nature of something, if for example we 
wished to distinguish a green coloured ball from amongst others of assorted 
colours.

Tudor:
Ok, then such a distinction does exist. Yet you say there's nothing as 
greenness.

Jud: The human sensory system distinguishes colour differences between 
objects, but it is the coloured items that exist not the colours. The colour 
phenomena is a product of the way in which our brain transacts and interprets the 
incoming wavelengths of light upon the retina. This is all basic physics which my 
six year old son could explain. 

However, it is the ball that is green - not the green that is green. The ball 
exists as a green ball - we could change the colour of the ball but we could 
not change the colour of the green - because green does not exist to be 
changed - only the existent ball can be existentially modified
- that which modifies it cannot be changed, because things which do not exist 
cannot be tampered with.

Tudor:
Ok, the green does not exist. Then how do you know a ball is green? The green 
then does exist, even if it is just a word. But, you say that words do no 
really exist. Then how do the words in an engineering manual affect the building 
of a power plant? It is not me who posits a split between body and soul, but 
it seems you do that. For the words do exist in their abstract world. And the 
power plant does exist in the real world. How do they interact?

Jud: 
We perceive the ball to exist in a modality that we have named "green" 
because of the wavelength of the incoming beams of photons and how they affect our 
sensory neurons.

A spoken word does not exist. What exists is the speaker who generates the 
sound waves which are detected by the hearer's auditory senses. The phonetic 
symbolisation carried by the sound waves enables the hearer to derive meaning 
from the sound in the same wave that the production of the coded message enables 
the speaker to convey his or her meaning to the addressee. Only the speaker 
and the hearer and the sound waves exist - the words do not exist, being 
activity of the neurons in the brain's of the protagonists.

Tudor: 
Finally, you just wrapped Plato's Idea or Kant's noumen in a layer of words 
which say the same thing, albeit in a more pretentious way 

Jud: 
In what way have I done this? Please explain.

You speak somehow of universal properties (such as being green), 

Jud: 
No, I DO NOT speak of "universal properties"  that is precisely what  I am 
NOT saying! What you call "properties" inhere in the observer - not the 
observed. A red ball is only perceived as red if there is a human observer to perceive 
it via the human optical system. A cow only has a "crumpled" horn if there 
are humans to categorise "crumpledness" as a category of cows' horns.

Tudor:
Yet you try to hide their existence through positing an unclear mechanism 
according to which such properties become known in the everyday life. 

Jud: It is impossible to "hide" their "existence" for two reasons:
1) Properties don't exist.
2) "Existence" doesn't exist either.

There is nothing "unclear" or "mysterious" about the human sensory system. 
There are opticians' shops on every street-corner. If you have ear problems 
there are plenty of specialists available. Go and ask them if you still don't 
understand how light and sound waves affect these organs and how certain 
imperfections in the eyes and ears can result in colours being perceived differently 
and sounds take on a different character from normal. If the leaf appears green 
to you and brown to a person with colour blindness how can the leaf inhere two 
colours at once?
COLOURS DON'T EXIST -  it is a phenomena produced from our sensory mediation 
of light waves from reflected surfaces.

Tudor:
The words in the layer are "properties" and "words". You say such properties 
are "just" words. But what is that a word? If it is a combination of letters, 
how then such a word does have a real influence on the real world?

Jud: 
The word has absolutely no real influence upon the real world - is the 
MEANING which is conveyed by the word which influences the actions of people in the 
world. The word is but the vehicle which conveys the meaning. If the meaning 
of the word is not known, or misunderstood, or has a different meaning to 
different people that perceived meaning or lack of meaning may produce different 
outcomes although the letters that make up the word remain unchanged. You should 
concentrate more on the MEANING of words rather than upon the words 
themselves, though I realise that words are important in your rituals and invocations.

Tudor: 
You posit words and sketch a tendency to attribute them meanings, yet you 
forget that a word is a meaning as one glass filled with water is able to relief 
thirst. 

Jud: 
In order to write one must posit - how else can one communicate?


Tudor:
I rephrase: you posit words as "just" (empty) words. But, a word is never 
empty. It always has energy, a potential of having a real effect.

Jud: 
A word is a sign - it has no energy. The energy is generated by the writer or 
reader of the word as a response to the meaning communicated by the word. The 
words on a sign with an arrow saying: "Gentlemans' Toilet" has no energy, any 
energy generated is in the mind of the man who desires to urinate and can't 
get to the stall quick enough..

There is nothing mystical about a dictionary - it is simply a code-book which 
records the meaning of words - a reference book containing an alphabetical 
list of words with information about them as to their significance and meaning 
within the body of the language group with which they are associated. You look 
for mysticism where there is none - you flutter towards perceived perplexity 
where non exists.

Tudor:
Ok, in the dictionary there are words which define other words. But, you say, 
reality is not composed of words. How do they interact?

Jud: 
Words are the way that humans convey their thoughts about the world to each 
other. The reality as perceived by humans is the only reality we can ever know, 
for to perceive it differently would not to be human. It is fun to speculate 
what a colourless world would be like in the same way that it is fun to 
speculate what it would be like if there was actually a God. But it is no more than 
a leisure activity for me.

For me the world comprises of entities and we communicate what we think and 
feel about those entities [including ourselves] using significations - there is 
nothing mysterious about this. Why do you think words are mysterious?

Tudor:
In order to know what words are, we'd need to have knowledge of what the Word 
is. 

Jud: 
No, people who had/have never heard of the bible could/can speak and 
understand words. It is YOU that needs to have knowledge of what the Word is. 

Tudor:
But, in order to know Him, we'd have to see His face. While He refuses such 
Self-revelation, we have to do with mysteries.

Jud: 
No, in order to know Him, YOU have to see His face - not I nor the millions 
of Europe who have turned their backs upon such nonsense.
As Count Korzybski said: The map is not the territory.

Tudor:
Then you have to explain why Stalin's red pencil on a map did define 
territory.

Jud: 
The image of the territories which Stalin carved up on the Kremlin table was 
not the ACTUAL territory itself it was a cartographic representation.

Jud:
If I am referring to humankind I employ the appropriate plural pronoun - like 
it or not I am human too. ;-)

Tudor:
What does "human" means to you?

Jud: 
Any living or extinct member of the animal family of Hominidae

Jud:
Mathematical thought is the manipulation of symbols, which represent notional 
Numbers - like time math is a convenient abstraction - a cognitive tool.

Tudor:
Then how such abstractions do have impact on the real world?

Jud: 
Because we humans using the tools of math translate the ideas into action.
I am an eliminative reductionist - there is no gap - the body-brain is a 
singular holistic entity - an existential nexus of great complexity. There is no 
body and soul.

Tudor:
Then what do you understand through "meaning"?

Jud: 
The message that is intended or expressed or signified via words, signs, 
expressions, gestures, images.
If you wish to discover how a word typed on your keyboard arrives on my 
screen you need to take a course in computer studies.

Tudor:
Such a study would fail in its purpose. The study can only fulfill it through 
an extra foundationst research in quantum mechanics, which has to explain why 
computers do work.

Jud: 
Do that then - it may help to lift the veil from your eyes

YOU DON'T HAVE ANY WORDS INSIDE YOUR HEAD

Tudor:
For a materialist, this sounds very strange.

Jud: 
Words represent the neuronal activity of the embrained body embodied brain as 
it seeks to communicate with other embrained bodies embodied brains. If you 
slice off the top of a skull you will find no words therein. There is no "mind, 
soul or consciousness" just the activity of the thinking meat utilising its 
storehouse of chemico-electro memory.

the symbols are generated in accordance with learned pathways which have been 
retained in your body-brain's memory. The human body-brain generates words 
reflexively in similar way to which a dog barks or a bird twitters its 
territorial claim - it is the way that Tudor exists when he is in his communicative 
mode.

Tudor:
Obviously, we have no experience of being a dog or a bird. Yet we can speak 
of being a brid or a dog? How do we do that?

Jud: By a combination of guesswork, intuition, observation of its activity 
and behaviour, by reasoning from detailed facts to general principles, and by 
reasoning from the general to the particular (or from effect to effect)

What is an electric central - do you mean electric central heating?

Tudor:
A power plant.

Jud:
In Britain we call it an Electricity Generating Station [but no matter.]



Cheers,

Jud.

<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A> 
Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY.
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>

--part1_b0.39be5d9c.2c074809_boundary

HTML VERSION: