[MD] Dualism and Eagleton's God Delusion

[david buchanan]

David M said to dmb:
You are very confused. The possible is the mother of all that is actual. 
Experience is entirely rich in the possible and the actual. You see an 
actual lion coming your way, the experience/meaning of lion includes the 
possibility of it eating you, without this real possibility you might forget 
to avoid hanging around too long. You see some nice dinner, what would 
dinner be without the possibility of eating it, is this possibility actual 
before you eat the dinner? No it is a real possibility that has yet to 
become actual but is utterly present in your experience of having a dinner 
before you. ...The possible is and so is real yet may never become actual.  
...you wrongly start associating the possible with some realm disconnected 
from experience. This is where you are going wrong and getting confused. The 
distinction possible/actual simply applies to experience just like DQ/SQ. EG 
mathematicians can be said to explore what is possible, and this has a 
dynamic creative and static differentiating aspect. Mathematicians and other 
forms of knowledge help us to map both what is actual and what is possible 
and how these two aspects of experience-reality relate. And 
experience=reality, it's all real, actual experience and possible 
experience. There is some connection here to the inner/outer distinction 
where we can share experiences of actualised reality where as our 
explorations of what is possible is experience internally and is a rich 
source of DQ, innovation, discovery. ...How do we build, what do we build 
with, if not possibilities? no possibilities no DQ I'm afraid. Surely DQ is 
real DMB?

dmb says:
If I am confused it's only because you are confusing me. I can see that 
you're trying to equate DQ with "the possible" but it doesn't work. I think 
the inner/outer distinction and the mathematics example both betray the fact 
that you're working within the assumptions of SOM here. But the thing that 
really reveals "the possible" as a bunch of nonsense is your assertion that 
"the possible" is known in experience. If you imagine the possibility that 
the lion might try to have you for lunch, you have not experienced that 
possibility. You have experienced your imagination, your fear, your 
foresight but you have not had the experience of being eaten. To say, as you 
have above, that this means that "the possible" is part of experience is a 
rather transparent rhetorical slight of hand. The same fallacy is used in 
your math example too, where the predictive equations are actual and part of 
experience even if they are different from the actual experiments and actual 
applications.

Basically, I think a person has to torture logic and the english language in 
order to make a case that "the possible" is a real thing that we can know in 
experience. The possible is what may or may not happen. It refers to what we 
do not yet know, what could be the case. That's why it is contrasted with 
"the actual" and makes no sense to say that it is real. And that is why we 
can't equate "the possibilty" with DQ, because "the possible" is not part of 
experience. It only refers to what could be and if it is only possible 
rather than actual then it might also never be. The possible does not exist 
because it either becomes actual or it doesn't. So if it is known in 
experience, then we can't rightly call it the possible any more. And if it 
never becomes actual then it is also outside of experience.

As you can see, we also disagree about who is confused here.

dmb

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