[MD] Mystics, Brains -- Matt has a question

[Case]

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Matt Kundert
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 12:59 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Mystics, Brains -- Matt has a question

Hey Case,

Well, like I said at the outset, I haven't been following the conversations 
you've been in that closely.  When you say I "complained of [your] 
enthusiasm for figurative science," I have to confess that I don't know 
where I did that, primarily because I'm not sure what "figurative science" 
is supposed to refer to.  I'm not sure what you're pointing at or what you 
are reacting to when, I guess, you suggest that I'm like others in 
suggesting the "poverty of modern metaphors."  I guess I might be inclined 
to say something like that, but only under highly specific circumstances, 
and not ones revolving around science--only representationalism.

So, I don't know.  A lot of what you said was interesting, but I'm not sure 
how it hooked up much with what I was talking about.  I don't know.  You did

say, "Wisdom is knowing when to pay attention to what," and I can only 
enthusiastically agree with that.  And I can certainly agree with disliking 
"the idea that somehow mysticism can tag team with science to throw theism 
out of the ring and smash it with a folding chair."  I've been at odds with 
DMB for some time about that, about how I don't know how to be a Jamesian 
anti-theist without throwing out "The Will to Believe."  But I'm not sure 
what saying "science is my favorite way of thinking about things" means.  If

it means you are drawn to read Science Magazine as opposed to the New Yorker

or the London Review of Books, then I guess it makes sense as a preference.

But if it means that you prefer thinking of the table as a cloud of 
electrons as opposed to brown and solid, then it just sounds weird.

If you construe "representations" as "memories and models of the future," 
then I guess I have no real problems with that, none that I can immediately 
see.  What pragmatism's assault on representationalism is is the suggestion 
that we get rid of the metaphors of sight and of mirroring reality from 
philosophical reflection.  Those, pragmatists suggest, are what caused 
Plato's problem and the problems of modern, Cartesian epistemology.

Matt

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