[Wittrs] Re: Stuart on the unity of self
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:12:49 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> The point I was making, though, was that the unified field, in the
case that represents dualism, is conceived as an irreducible,
> the self or observer in the mix to which any further breakdown to
something that is NOT the unified field, isn't possible.
Thank you Stuart. With some correction, you have stated my position. The
unity of the self doesn't suggest that the person is all of one piece,
that he is aware of all his aspects or dispositions, but, rather, the
self can't be broken down, reduced, into something not self, and surely
not physical.
> It is that commitment to irreducibility that constitutes the dualism.
For you, but not for me. Since you start with the assumption that you
know of a physical world other than self, then the self, as it emerges,
is either physical (more of the same), i.e., monism or it is something
other, mental, and hence Dualism. But I don't start with your assumption
of a known physical world other than me.
I start with the person making sense out of his experiences. There are
all sorts of experiences. Some are called physical, others spiritual,
aesthetic, abstract (logic, numbers) and so on. These judgments don't
require the positing of any underlying substance. Hence, the
dualism/monism distinction has no application.
> or some mysterious irreducible property that some physical things...
have and some don't?
Since I don't see the world as consisting only of chunks of the
physical, I wouldn't dream of attributing consciousness as a property to
some of these physical chunks. Rather I experience all sorts of objects,
some alive, some alive in different ways, and, of course people. But a
person's consciousness, for me, isn't a property of his physical body,
even though having a physical body is a condition for being human.
To conclude: Your view, what Nagel calls the "view from nowhere" that
pretends that we can know of a physical world not us, as it is, and try
to say how the physical makes the mental, suppresses that this view is
still a view.
Simply put, you divide the physical from the mental and then try to
imagine how the physical can do this, all the time forgetting that you
have only imagined the physical apparent from the mental.
And I'm not suggesting Idealism. I didn't say mind generated the
physical. I'm just trying to start at the beginning, account giving, and
before the beginning, i.e., some state of absolute materiality.
bruce
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