From: "Edward Moore" <monsieurtexteem-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Soul and Body Two
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 17:58:55 PDT


Of Soul and Body... hello:

>> Not independent.  But like water and the fish tank.  Only we leak, 
and 
>> take stuff in.  We only know about the stuff that passes through us 
>> because we have a body.  But we certainly don't deny the existence of 
>> stuff that doesn't pass through us... do we?  If we deny anything, 
why 
>> do we continue to educate ourselves?  
>
>I have seen better and more accurate description of this in the works 
>by Ilya Prigogine.

Thanks.  I don't aim for accuracy.

>> How can I dismiss science?  How?  When the whole idea of science 
>> animates the dualistic provocation of lived experience and colorful 
>> conjecture which we call progress?  "Arbitrary" is more like it.  The 
>> "soul" (only a metaphor!) is always out there, ready to pass through 
>> some receptive body....  
>
>Then you are not Hegelian either...

I am a "Moorean," if I must be labelled.

>> On what level are we speaking here?  Of what degree...?  I'm no 
>> scientist, but does the carbon atom receive... oh, what shall I 
say... 
>> extra-material influences that affect its responses to external 
forces 
>> at a future date?  
>
>I thought some recent experiments about "non-locality" 
>were suggesting that. 

You mean carbon atoms receive emotional and intellectual (etc.) effects 
from their experiences of art, music, poetry... Wow!

>> Does an atom EVOLVE... not physically, but 
>> SPIRITUALLY?
>
>I thought that life was based on the properties of Carbon ?
>So a carbon atom evolves in a way after all.
>"spirituality" is what evolution produces after a time so long that 
>no human being can get a decent representation of it.

I don't follow.  Perhaps my mysticism prevents me from replying to 
someone who seems to be my total antithesis.

>> "Existence is elsewhere."  (I couldn't resist)  But did you 
understand 
>> what I was getting at when I spoke of metalepsis?  If you are able to 
>> achieve a total identification with someone who existed a thousand 
years 
>> ago (and still exists as an influential force via their writing or 
art), 
>> then you can experience the activity of your own thought from the 
>> distance of the time-span.  Longinus knew of this, in a way, when he 
>> wrote about the "sublime" in art -- one of the effects of the 
"sublime" 
>> being the sensation that the work in question is or could have been a 
>> product of your own creative self.  If your "soul" is nothing more 
nor 
>> less than received influences that pass through your body, which 
>> "processes" them, only to pass back out into the world when you die, 
>> then you can achieve an immortality as a spirit always waiting to be 
>> born... that is, if you leave behind a WORK to be interpreted.  
>> Interpretation is altering, it defers birth by an "unautonomous 
creative 
>> act."  When you leave behind a WORK, you also leave behind a greater 
>> body... an _incorruptible_ body.  
>
>Let's be serious...
>Information can be duplicated, that's all.
>(It is an important property nevertheless, may be a sufficient one 
>for defining "information")

Information is not duplicated, but rather iterated, dissemintated (to 
borrow two terms from Derrida).  There is no such thing as a precise 
duplication (or for that matter an imprecise duplication), for each time 
the piece of information is received by an individual, it is placed in a 
new context: the life-realm of that individual, with its own system of 
relations and interpretations.  We do not merely receive information and 
duplicate it in our minds, we process it in an unique way... call it the 
raw material of new information... an endless movement, an "infinite 
conversation."

>> Exactly.  And I would argue that metaphor began with religion.
>
>I think we have plenty of evidences that the reverse is true.
>Metaphor was there first, and some misuse and misunderstandings led 
>to religion.

But isn't metaphor itself a misuse and misunderstanding of language?  
I'll defer to you, however, and revise my statement: religion was the 
direct outgrowth of metaphor, almost a simultaneous birth.

>> Yes.  But it is a combination that can, and has, produced genius.  
>> IMMORTAL genius.
>
>What will the crabs and the scopions think about the human immortal 
>genius when mankind has disappear ?

We can only speak of immortality relative to our existing context -- the 
human world.  The term "immortal" is a metaphor that is a product of our 
human world, and it doesn't take oblivion into consideration.  When our 
world, our existing context, passes into oblivion, so will "crabs" and 
"scorpions."  But, and here is how you contradicted yourself, if the 
crabs and scorpions are capable of thinking at all, then our collective 
immortality and perhaps even our genius will remain immortal!

No.  I'm not being serious.  Sorry.

>Information can be duplicated, that's all.
>But ain't THAT strange ?

"Information can be duplicated, that's all.
But ain't THAT strange ?"

Formation in duplication is quite strange... as strange as a 
scorpion-man (see Gilgamesh)...  

"Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written ... can be 
_cited_, put between quotation marks; in so doing it can break with 
every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner 
which is absolutely illimitable" (Jacques Derrida, _Signature Event 
Context_ 1988, p. 12).

Edward Moore
<monsieurtexteEM-AT-hotmail.com>



---------------------------------------------------------
Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
---------------------------------------------------------