[MD] The Edge 2006 Annual Question

[ian glendinning]

Gav, David, Mike, Bo, Scott,

Mike, although I expressed the fact we seemed to have converged on
some agreement about "new-objectivity", I was surprised when you and
David latched onto the idea that this was what Bo had been saying all
along. It threw me for a few days.

Yes, Bo has been pushing objectivity as intellect in MoQ4, but I've
never seen this as anything other than GOF-Objectivity. Still don't ?
I still see this as the main difference between Bo and myself and
other pejoratively so-called "Paul-acolytes".

I think Scott is right that Mike's final words don't say anything
completely novel about the MoQ, in fact the point is these are ancient
ideas, re-presented for a "new-objective" age. New-age ?
New-objective-age ? (I think my New-Age+++ is this latter
"new-objective-age".)

There is something in there, which Gav liked too
> society admitted its own
> inadequacy by relaxing its powers of coercion to
> allow individual liberty

I'm reading Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" at the moment. Liberty,
free-will, causation, evolution - it's all there. I see strong
parallels between MoQ and Dennett (though he would gag at it's mystic
new-agey overtones), and the parallel is in recognising evolution at
all levels, not just biological, but intellectual too.

Gav, there are a few other "philosophers" in that Edge list, but of
course, as I may have said, anyone at the edge of theoretical sciences
is up to their necks in actual metaphysics - so they're (almost) all
philosophers really.

Lynn Margulis ? - getting into Antropic Principle territory ? Another
day maybe. Great news you're going back to Uni to finish off. I'll
come back to you some more on the New-Agey thread - cos it's more your
scene, man :-)

Ian.

On 1/8/06, gav <gav_gc at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> cheers ian.
> where were all the philosophers in that poll?
>
> liked lynn margulis - we are bacteria, and the guy who
> said that science is another religion.
>
> SOM is obviously still dominating academically.
> actually i have been thinking a bit lately about uni,
> cos i am going back in a month to finish my philosophy
> masters off. .....