From: Olie Lamb (olie@vaporate.com)
Date: Wed Nov 02 2005 - 18:10:13 MST
David Picon Alvarez wrote:
>>Sorry, Mr Clark, but there are a helluvalotta well respected atheists
>>and disbelievers in the "soul" who hold a concept of "mind" or
>>"consciousness" as being non physical; philosophers from Kant, Hegel and
>>Berkely to those such as Heidegger or even (I suspect) Chalmers.
>>
>>
>
>Kant, Hegel and Berkeley are atheists or disbelievers in the soul? Wow, that
>IS news.
>
>
Oops!
I was thinking "Idealists everyone will know". McTaggart would have
been my preferred example (Not a Goddy), but he's not a widely known,
respected smarty.
Similarly, Husserl would appropriately fit the non-physicalist bill
without being an idealist, or a religious type. Mystic, maybe...
>>The concept of non-physical truth or information doesn't have to be as
>>inelegant as Descartes's Dualism.
>>
>>
>
>But the joining of physical and non-physical systems ends up two ways, both
>hard to believe: The cartesian way (a physical element which is subject to
>non-physical laws) and the leibnizian way (pre-established harmony of
>physicality and non-physicality, at which point one can wonder what
>difference non-physicality makes).
>
>
Instead of "joining" information or subjective experiences to the
physical, try using the term "transcend". "Transcendance" is an
admittedly wooly term, but I'm not actually trying to articulate a
metaphysic here! (Yes, I have no technical understanding). The point
is that its not one substance and another substance glued together, but
that certain relations between physical stuff can amount to something
broader than the physical stuff.
Pastiche of transcendance: The whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. But then you gotta ask: How?
-- Olie
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