[lit-ideas] Re: _Philosophy 4_
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 14:32:31 -0600
>>It may seem silly to try to correct Geary's answers...
I beg your pardon? Have you joined forces with Walter? Become a Kantian?
>>You forget Anaxagoras's doctrine.<<
I thought it too elementary for moi to have to elaborate on. Very well then.
Anaxagoras was a WYSIWYG philosopher, that is, he believed there was no gap
between appearance and reality; everything we perceive is real. Reality is
just a bunch of elemental stuff, he professed. He held there was an
indeterminate number of stuffs as opposed to the unimaginative Empedocles who
could only imagine 4 such stuffs. Better than poor Thales though who never got
beyond being the water boy of Greek philosophy. Mind, Ana also had a thing
called mind, actually he called it "nous" -- I prefer the spelling 'noose' --
which, he taught, is found in all living things and is finer than the stuffs
and does not mix with them and which was responsible for organizing the stuffs
into the things we see. Plato called him "sober". I guess they didn't have
Guinness in Greece.
>>Isn't being the winner in a one-team match yet _still_ being a winner?<<
What? Have you joined forces with McEvoy? You think 2 + 2 call equal 5 unless
you can verify that it can't? Or something like that? Winner is like, like
the WINNER between 2 or more contestants. No contestant, no winner. I
shouldn't have to explain this to you. My, my.
>>noumenon -- what is thought. From nouein
phenomenon -- from 'phainomi', what it appears
(defective verb)<<
What? You think I don't know these elementary terms? Paris Hilton -- nothing
there but what you see.
Emily Dickinson -- she was her imagination. Catch up on American culture for
Christ's sake and apply it to Greek philosophy.
>>Democritus was _not_, that I know, Pythagoras's second-cousing once-removed.
>>What's your source for stating they were thus related?<<
I don't need no stinking sources. Do you have any source to rebut my claim?
I'm sick of people wanting sources. I'm my own resource.
>>You do have the time, and the space so I take you are unwilling to share.<<
Now I have the time. You state: "5. Experience is the result of time and space
being included in the nature of mind. Discuss this." Experience is a hard
teacher, they say, so let's look to some sources. Barbara Tuchman says:
"Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced." Benjamin
Franklin said: "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no
other." Now this seems a contradiction to me. Perhaps because they were in
different times and spaces. Let us look further into the matter. Edward
Gibbon said: "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the
lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past."
Here we have time and space and mind. But that qupte was probably just a blurb
that he wrote for his own "Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire". I'd ignore
that source. Now Francis Bacon, you remember him, he was in question 4, he has
something very pertinent to say here:
"The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the
reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But
the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of
the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not
unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science); for it neither relies
solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which
it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the
memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and
disgested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two
faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made),
much may be hoped."
Yes, that's the ticket! A bee has to find the flowers. She has to transverse
both space and time to get to the flower all the while locking the experience
in her little bee mind. Then she takes the nectar -- God obviously does not
believe in private property -- and she winds her way home where she tells the
other bees the way to go in space and how long it takes to get there. And they
all thank her for sharing her experience. So yes, experience is the result of
time and space being included in the nature of mind. Or vice versa.
>>Your answer would be totally correct if by 'ancient' you mean _classical_
>>Greek, but that's not how the question is stated.<<
Are we being anally retentive or what?
>>Basically correct...
It all comes down to the basics. Get the basics right and you never walk
alone, or something like that. I got the basics right, even you admit that, so
get off my case.
>>You fail to tell us where _you_ think the properties reside. Surely for Locke
>>the primary qualities (bulk, shape, weight) reside in a different place than
>>the secondary quality of sweetness. <<
Sorry, no one's ever asked me for my opinion before. I believe the sweetness
resides in the molecules that trigger the nerve endings in the tongue that let
loose the sodium and potassium ions that race along the neurons until they
smack into the "sweet" neurons in our brainy brain brains which light up the
night sky with the word: "SWEET, OH YEAH, BABY!". Same with bulk, shape and
weight, but with different molecules exciting different nerve endings.
Sweetness is not a secondary quality. What's secondary about it? I'd rank it
primary if there was such a ranking system. Everything comes through the
senses, bulk, weight, shape through sight and feel, sweetness through taste.
There is no heirarchy of sensations. Get a grip.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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