[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[david buchanan]

Case said Micah:
Let me repeat one more time with feeling: You have no more or less reason to 
attribute consciousness to members of your own species than to members of 
another species.

dmb says:
How do you figure? I mean, Micah can attribute consciousness to the human 
species simply because he is a human being with consciousness. He knows it 
from experience. He knows it from the "inside", if you will, whereas with 
animals....

Case also said:
In order to examine the limits of animal consciousness various techniques 
both observational and experimental have been used. This applied to our 
effort to understand human as well as animal awareness.

dmb says:
We can see the difference here. The limits of observation and 
experimentation as they are conducted in the behavioral sciences are such 
that we can only see the outside and then based on that come to some 
conclusions about what might be going on inside. I'm not saying the whole 
enterprise is bogus, but there is a real distinction betweeen knowing 
consciousness in one's own experience and guessing what its like based on 
observable behaviors, even if the guess is a solid, educated guess.

But I'm thinking that the "man is the measure" motto should be read on a 
different level. Don't know if I can say it clearly or even if it can be 
said clearly, but let me give it a shot.

I am not a monkey.

That sentence, when read on the conventional level, means that monkeys are 
seperate from me, distinct from me, different from me. And we could split 
some hairs about this distinction because, as primates and fellow earth 
creatures, we also share some things in common.

I am not a monkey.

On a different level, this sentence USES the difference between me and 
monkeys to make a claim about what I am. One of the things that I am is "not 
a monkey". It sounds kinda odd, but one of the things that defines my 
existence, is my "notmonkeyness". And there are lots of things we could use 
to define me like my "notyouness" and my "notgreatness". We expand this 
notion to every little thing, and to every big thing too. All things exist 
in relation to all other things in a matrix of distinctions. And I think it 
is in this sense, that should read the motto 'Man is the measure of all 
things". Man exists by virtue of every thing that he is not. Paradoxically, 
(or maybe I'm just not making sense) we are defined by are and by what we 
are not. The notness is crucial to our identity, to our existence and the 
whole world is created by way of these distinctions.

Maybe somebody like Arlo could put this better

I'm just saying that B.F. Skinner won't help us to understand Protagoras. 
You need a mystic or some kind of postmodernist to get at it, I think.

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