[MD] Ghost buster

[Gene M]

I agree completely DMB. Too many posts on this forum are just disagreement,
so I'd thought I'd chime in and say Absolutely. !00% dead on in my opinion.
Everything is a fiction, it's just that some fictions work better for some
things than others. It's all a question of Quality.

-Gene

On 10/11/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Arlo and all:
>
> I'm not sure what this debate was about, so I'm probably going off on a
> tanget or just changing the topic outright. That's why I changed the
> thread
> name. Anyway, I'd like to suggest that the meaning of these passages isn't
> in support of ghosts so much as it is an attack on naive realism, common
> sense. Well, "attack" is too strong a word, but....
>
> For those who haven't noticed or would like another look, here are the
> quotes again. More comments below...
>
> >[Arlo quoted ZMM]
> >"It's completely natural," I say, "to think of Europeans who believed in
> >ghosts or Indians who believed in ghosts as ignorant. The scientific
> point
> >of view has wiped out every other view to a point where they all seem
> >primitive, so that if a person today talks about ghosts or spirits he is
> >considered ignorant or maybe nutty. It's just all but completely
> impossible
> >to imagine a world where ghosts can actually exist."
> >
> >John nods affirmatively and I continue.
> >
> >"My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn't that superior.
> >IQs aren't that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just
> as
> >intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was
> completely
> >different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite
> as
> >real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern man. In that
> >sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you
> >know."
> >
> >"What?"
> >
> >"Oh, the laws of physics and of logic—the number system—the principle of
> >algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so
> >thoroughly they seem real.
> >
> >[Arlo then added]
> >I'd say he'd quite readily acknowledge his metaphysics is inhabited by
> >ghosts.
>
> dmb replies:
> In their context "spirits are quite as real as atoms". I guess that's the
> main point here. But it seems to me that defending ghosts is not part of
> Pirsig's attack on SOM. What he's doing here, I think, is pointing out
> that
> "atoms" are just as fictional as all the other explanations that have come
> and gone and that some day such beliefs may even seem just as ignorant or
> nutty. And I think this ties in with the whole
> essentialism/anti-essentialism thing Matt K used to discuss here. So this
> brings us back to that constructivist sort of thing, but with metaphysics.
> Its not that all the physicists are hallucinating. Its perfectly
> reasonable
> to believe in atoms. But when it comes right down to it, atoms and laws
> (and
> the self and the world and just every little "thing" that common sense
> tells
> us is real) are just deductions from experience, not reality. Its all a
> reasonable fiction, a habit of mind drawn from the patterns of experience,
> but if I understand what anti-essentialism means in this grandest of
> metaphysical contexts then there is no there there. Oh, its a real
> deduction. This is part of the world,   part the mythos we inhabit and it
> works pretty well. Just ask those guys over in Hiroshima about the power
> of
> our ghosts. They know it works. I'm just saying, these passages are an
> attack on the dogmas of the church of reason and I think ghosts are used
> to
> undermine the rigidity of our beliefs in them. I think he's saying that
> the
> medieval church and the church or reason both have this tendency to assert
> the existence of unseen entities in order to explain what can be seen, to
> invent realities to explain experience. These explanations, these
> inventions, are then taken as real. And this goes way, way back. An
> invisible, eternal world parallel to this visible, corruptible one? The
> Prime Mover?  The substantial forms? Atoms, strings, quarks? They're
> deductions from experience. And they more or less work for a while, but
> the
> experience is more real than the deductions that follow. Ghosts. Its okay
> to
> believe in them as long as you believe they are ghosts, that they're not
> real unless you believe in them. is that subtle or just confusing?
>
> Help!
> dmb
>
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