Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 08:13:04 -0600
From: George Trail <gtrail-AT-UH.EDU>
Subject: Re: PLC: sets



>1) What's the difference between being and non-being? Before I decide that I
>am, I'd like to be able to check into the possibility that maybe I am not. How
>could I tell the difference?

Part of Descartes' point is that you be because you can conceive, which, if
you did not be, or were not, you could not. If, in other words you could
"experience" non-being it wouldn't be non-being. But let me ask another
question. How do you "know" that you are awake?
>
>2) What is Descartes thinking about?
>A bunch of pea brains in a lab removed a monkey's brain and kept it alive for
>several days, just so they could mystify themselves wondering what the brain
>was thinking "about." How could it have been thinking about anything? There
>wasn't any input.

Ever had a dream? Ever heard of a sensory deprivation chamber? Ever thought
that the entirety of "existence" could be a dream? Ever heard of Maya?

>What I meant in calling Aristotle's statement sensible is that it touches base
>with  sensory experience.  It isn't involved with nonsense concepts like pure
>thought (in which nothing in particular is being thought about or one is "just
>thinking").  Just because a person can utter words like "thought in an
>abstract sense," and get a thrill out of uttering them,  doesn't mean the
>words are meaningful when used in that way. There's no referent. Or it's an
>empty category. Or whatever.

Blake says that _in this age_ the body is the chief inlet, implying that it
is only a failure of imagination that it is so.

>Same problem with a scientist who announces that he intends to be "objective,"
>and takes himself so seriously  that he imagines this actually makes him
>"objective." He isn't thinking about what his words mean, or whether they mean
>anything. He just thinks some magic is effected by uttering them.  That's why
>it took  2500 years to figure out that the experimenter is part of the
>experiment.  That we can't magically elevate ourselves above the sensible
>(sensory?) world just because we think we'd like to do so.

The scientist does not claim to do so. When she refers to "objectivity" she
refers to the possibility of duplicating the experiment and coming thereby
to the same conclusion. What is "objective" is not that there is no
experimenter, but that the experimenter could be anyone, and the experiment
endless repeated.

>It seems to me that trying to prove the world exists runs afoul of the same
>problem as trying to prove God exists.  Don't you have to start with a
>definition of terms and explain what you mean by "exists?"  And do you
>seriously think the term can be defined?

Descartes wasn't trying to prove that the world existed. He was trying to
find a way to extricate himself from the condition in which all can (and
therefore must,if one is honest) be doubted, which means that it can and
must be doubted that there _is_ a world out there in which there can be
"yellow."
>
>pat
>
>
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