Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 09:42:49 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: love and difference - genome


Eric/All,

This is the most succint and intriguing message in many months.  Its about
philosophy and ideas, not philosophers and fads, ergo comment in detail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eric wrote:
>Steve,

>I need to be brief here, but I regard myself as a soft social
constructionist, meaning that >atoms, quarks, economic transactions etc.,
although mediated through systems of >culture and language, are nonetheless
real in some sense.

mediated?  real? - is mathematics an event that would occur without human
brains?

> I don't think of them as purely imaginary and still regard myself in some
sense as both a >materialist and atheist in a way that I hope is not
inconsistent.

how could anything be purely imaginary?  why fear inconsistency, its a step
towards problem resolution.

>I think of myself as a humanist as well to the extent that I oppose the
specter of post->human complexification that Lyotard describes and which
currently appears to be >driving the planetary
economic-technological-cybernetic Matrix machine.

in a sense it's a machine, but it is also the political control of
institutions by the world's wealthiest individuals - individuals who own the
world - their dollars defeat a democracy of one person one vote -  elections
are dollar-determined.

>I think of myself as inhuman to the extent that humanism often becomes a
closed >program that tends to limit us in essentialist ways.  In other
words, I am inhuman to the >extent I feel I need to be witness to the
in-fans in order to keep humanity open to the >Event.

These two sentences, along with the concept of the "sublime", are
first-person statements I think I agree with, but seem to never fully
understand.  Dictionaries are little help with words that are like passwords
to secret meanings:  essentialist, post-human, in-fans, Event.

>You have to clarify what you mean by realist.  I certainly believe that
genes and DNA >exist, but think that they do not occur in a vacuum, but
rather in an organism (even if >that organism is only the creation of the
selfish gene.) Organisms live in environments >and environments are not
things, but processes of interactive transformations which >change the
context in which the genes themselves occur - an open field.

how about "processes AND things"?   to trans-form is to change form.... form
= object
object = thing.

>My basic concerns are with a reductionist take on the genome project that
ignores all of >this.

>In a sense we still have not overcome the Kantian dilemma of the human as a
citizen of >two worlds.  One is the quasi-deterministic world of scientific
description, the other is >the social constructivist world of human agency.
Third person narrative and first person >narrative, if you will, recognizing
that narrative is ultimately a form of fiction - an >imaginary garden with
real toads-as Marianne Moore taught us so long ago.

Yes,  narrative = words - words are images, and are the foundation of the
"imagi-nary", whatever that is.

Letters symbolize sounds/speech - speech is the best possibility of
communicatition.  communication may or may not be a fiction, but is
certainly inadequate to express the complexity of first-person feelings,
emotion, states-of-mind.

regards,
Hugh




eric