[MD] David M and DMB clearly disagree -what do others think?

[david buchanan]

Matt said to David M:
I'm not sure if David mentioned knowing and knowledge in his excursus on 
"the possible," but DMB is bringing in "what we can know" to curb "what is 
real," such that, because the possible is, by conventional definition what 
we don't know because it hasn't happened yet, it isn't real. ... I'm not 
saying DMB _is_ regressing, but that is, I think, the point on which it 
hangs.  I think there is an obvious, commonsensical sense that DMB is right 
to defend, the idea that we don't _know_ the future (as, for instance, 
against seers), but I think David might be playing around with a different, 
broader sense of "know."

dmb says:
My objection to David M's assetions about "the possible" does not rest on 
SOM. I'm not saying that "the possible" is not real does not rest on the 
fact that it has no material existence. It fits with Radical Empiricism and 
the premise that reality is equated with experience. I'm saying that there 
is no reality outside of experience and that "the possible" is not real. 
Yes, of course a person can actually imagine what might be, what they'd like 
to see in the future and all those thoughts are real. We actually experience 
such speculations and I'm not denying the reality of the human imagination 
or the capacity to plan or predict.

What I'm objecting to is David's way of talking about "the possible" as if 
it were some kind of invisible realm or force of nature. Once he described 
how one possiblity dies as it collapses into the actuality and then how the 
other unactualized possibilities withdrawl, as if the possibilites lived and 
died and scurried about, as if "the possible" had an independent existence 
outside of experience. And I'm saying that if it is outside of experience 
then it is outside of reality. That's what I mean in saying "the possible" 
is not real.

I don't know if the following deserves to be called a thought experiment, 
but I'll ask you to ponder it. Imagine a certain kind of possibility. Try to 
imagine the possibilties that are unimaginable. And be careful not to 
actually imagine the unimaginable becasue if you do then it is no longer 
unimaginable by virtue of your having imagined it. You see, using dualism 
logic, where one can oppose our imaginations to that which is unimaginable 
whether or not there ever can actually be any such thing.

See, as Radical Empiricism posits, we can't ignore any kind of experience 
nor can we accept the existence of anything outside of experience so that 
reality and experience are identical. Nothing more and nothing less. To 
count anything outside of experience as part of reality, as James puts it, 
is to open a hole through which all metaphysical nonsense enters. I think 
"the possible" is an example of this sort of metaphysical nonsense.

And I'd point to the fact that David M is using phenomenology and physics to 
support this view and discusses it in terms of inner and outer realities. 
These are just a few of many ways in which he reveals that he's using the 
assumptions of SOM. I'll remind you that this debate began as an objection 
to Terry Eagleton's definition of God; the condition of possibility for all 
entities. If we take this condition to be the physical universe then we are 
right back into the metaphysics of substance and SOM. If we take this 
condition to be an underlying intelligence beyond it we are back into the 
same thing with some metaphysical clap-trap thrown in on top. I think its a 
bunch of nonsense either way.

Thanks.
dmb

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