[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 23:09:42 +0000
Mike -- I am flattered and honored.
I raise my glass with its 2nd-rate blended scotch over ice -- it should be
Bourbon and branch water for an appropriately Tennessean salute, but ah well.
Regards,
Eric Dean
Washington DC
From: atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 16:53:38 -0600
ED:
>>Alternatively, one might simply say that not
everything which is real must obey the laws of logic (to wit: human experience
of human emotion does not).
Logicians panic at the thought of such a
conclusion because [a & not-a] entails anything else, which is to say logic
won't do the hoped-for work. I think this is an over-reaction. The
potential reality of self-contradictory things merely means one has to be
explicit about the scope of objects to which one expects one's logical theory
to
apply. The fact that some real objects have self-contradictory properties
needn't mean that all real objects have self-contradictory properties.
In
any case, the assertion that all real objects must obey the laws of logic is a
substantive assertion, not merely an obvious formality; reasonable people, I
submit, may disagree with it.
This is among the many reasons I think the
notion of 'transcendental' is so dubious. The idea that conditions of
possibility can be asserted for all of reality is a generalization of the idea
that all real objects must obey the laws of logic. << And
etc.
Amen. This is exactly what I would have
written had I been intelligent enough to write it.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From:
Eric Dean
To: lit-ideas
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2008 4:06
PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of
life
I might add that the notion that real things must obey the laws
of logic is a substantive, not formal, constraint on the notion of "real" and
for much more mundane reasons than the abstruse questions of the status of
quantum objects.
This constraint on the real means that if something
appears to have contradictory properties then either the thing is not real,
or
one (or more) of its apparent properties is not real, or the contradictory
properties are resolvable into properties of parts (physical, temporal or
both) of the thing.
The result is that when one asks whether the
human experience of conflicting human emotions is real, one is forced either
to deny the reality of the experience, or to deny the reality of one of the
emotions, or to posit parts of the experiencing entity which experience the
individual and therefore un-conflicting emotions (as Plato did in the
Republic).
Alternatively, one might simply say that not everything
which is real must obey the laws of logic (to wit: human experience of human
emotion does not).
Logicians panic at the thought of such a conclusion
because [a & not-a] entails anything else, which is to say logic won't do
the hoped-for work. I think this is an over-reaction. The
potential reality of self-contradictory things merely means one has to be
explicit about the scope of objects to which one expects one's logical theory
to apply. The fact that some real objects have self-contradictory
properties needn't mean that all real objects have self-contradictory
properties.
In any case, the assertion that all real objects must obey
the laws of logic is a substantive assertion, not merely an obvious
formality;
reasonable people, I submit, may disagree with it.
This is among the
many reasons I think the notion of 'transcendental' is so dubious. The
idea that conditions of possibility can be asserted for all of reality is a
generalization of the idea that all real objects must obey the laws of
logic. But since the idea that conditions of possibility can be asserted
for subsets of reality is completely prosaic -- every conditional asserts a
condition of possibility for some subset of reality (if the sun comes up it
will be morning, i.e. the sun rising is a condition of the possibility of the
morning) -- transcendental claims must have a universal scope if they are to
be anything other than just plain old conditionals.
But since I think
that the human experience of human emotions (and of a lot else besides, I use
this as a hopefully compelling example) is real and does not (always) appear
to obey the laws of logic, I also think that transcendental analysis is
resting on an unstated presumption about the nature of the human experience
of
human emotion. That presumption, to preserve the laws of logic for use
in transcendental analysis, must resolve the apparent contradictory nature of
human experience.
I suspect that transcendental analysts have widely
differing versions of that presumption. Moreover, I also strongly
suspect that each version of that presumption, were it made explicit, would
be
seen to be a presumptuous interpretation of what it is like to for others to
live their lives. I make that blanket statement because the presumption
that has to be made explicit is one which would answer the question: "why do
I
sometimes both love and hate something?" Any answer to that question is
going to be an interpretation of what is happening when I experience both
love
and hate for something, i.e. it is going to be an interpretation of what it
is
like for me to live my life at such times, something which I think it
presumptuous for anyone else to think they can do.
The alternative, I
believe, is to forswear the expectation of finding transcendental conditions
of anything and try to muddle through bereft of the comforts such might have
given...
Regards to one and all
Eric Dean
Washington
DC
> Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 15:35:24 +0000
> From:
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of
life
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
> --- On Sat, 6/12/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
wrote:
>
> > From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
<wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> > Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of
life
>
> > No, logically contradictory statements cannot both
be true
> > in "real" life or
> > any other kind of life
characterized by rationality. Nor
> > can they both be
> >
false.
> > It's just another one of them transcendental
things.
>
> I don't have any objection to this apart from the
claim that this is something "transcendental". It seems to me it is rather
that 'logical space' (in Wittgenstein's TLP sense) cannot contain _both_ of
certain kinds of object - namely, both the 'object' posited by a proposition
and its negation. 'Empirical space' also obeys the rules of 'logical space'
or, at least, cannot contradict them - that is, it is empirically impossible
(just as it is logically impossible) that at the _self-same_ point in space
and time 'x' there is both a swan and an emu. It appears that Aristotle
stated
this.
>
> If there is to be an attack on this long-held orthodoxy
it might be best coming from modern maths and physics, where some theorists
seem to think something can be two things at once [e.g. a particle and a
wave]
and so on. Whether such an attack is valid is something that is unclear to
me,
especially as there is an apparent divide between those physicists who accept
the apparent contradictions between Einstein's theories of big things and his
theories of tiny, quantum things (accept because both theories are so
successful within there own domain) and those (like Einstein himself) who
take
the position these apparent contradictions need to be resolved within a more
general unified field theory.
>
> Donal
> London
>
>
>
>
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