[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

Fri Aug 20 13:12:05 PDT 2010

well, Krimel , i have been reading the posting of  you , regarding the DMB/
Steve interaction.
To be quit honest, i can see nothing wrong with the questions made by
Steve,nor with the answers provided by Dave.
Strange , Krimel , as i'm reading the other posts too, in the past , i have
to say i'll stick with my opinion that you , Krimel , most of the time, are
good , sharp , clever , educated, interested and interesting , ......but not
this time.
This line of presenting your dish will sharpen nobody's hunger.....for more.

This displays a lesser moment , Krimel.
Greetzz, Adrie

2010/8/20 Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com>

> [Krimel]
> Thanks for this grab bag of illustrations.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #1: The one size fits all explanation...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [Steve asks dmb a question
> ... I have a real question for you?  "What about consciousness?"  ... "the
> problem of consciousness" ... RMP's approach just sweeps it under the rug.
>
> [dmb responds:]
> Not sure you've asked an actual question here. What is the problem of
> consciousness, exactly? What's being swept under the rug by RMP's approach?
>
> But let me remind you that James' Essays in Radical Empiricism...
>
> [Krimel]
> There it is. The answer to every question. The wielding of the only tool in
> Dave's tool box.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #2: The steel trap mind slamming shut...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> As you're reading Chalmers ask yourself if he's operating with the
> subject-object metaphysical assumptions. Do you think you could spot such a
> thing? It'll probably mean reading between the lines just because
> assumptions are like that. They tend to go without saying. If anyone is
> likely to be explicit about such a thing, it'll be a philosopher. But
> still.
>
>
> [Krimel]
> It is hard to see how anyone interested in the idea of consciousness could
> ignore or dismiss Chalmers but for dmb it's not a problem. Rather than
> engage the issues raise he slaps on the label: SOM and "Presto" no need to
> read, no need to engage the issue, time to just sit back and feel self
> righteous.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #3: Appeal to authorities then embarrass them...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> By the time James was all pumped up about radical empiricism in 1904 and
> 1905, a period of explosive creativity for James, he was also very excited
> about a philosophical wild man named Gustav Fechner.
>
> [Krimel]
> Here we see dmb's sense of history mangled. James talks extensively about
> Fechner in his Principles of Psychology because Fechner was among the first
> and best at trying to quantify the senses. James got "all pumped up" to
> write and introduction to Fechner's pamphlet "The Little Book of Life After
> Death" originally published in 1836 under a pseudonym. I think it would be
> difficult to find thinkers from the 19th century able to divorce themselves
> from animistic, spiritualist thinking. Surely at a century and a half's
> remove we ought to be able to forgive them. But dmb instead prefers to cite
> them as justification for a continuing adherence to these quaint
> misconceptions.
>
> Holding Fechner and James up as giving authority to animism and
> spiritualism
> does them both a disservice. It assumes that those positions are unaffected
> by a century of research and discourse. More knowledge of the physiology,
> cause and effects, and abstract metaphysical thinking on and about the
> brain
> and consciousness have take place in the past 25 years that in the whole
> span of history leading up to Fechner and James' time. It insults them both
> to think that their idea are unaffected by this progress.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #4: Letting the bathwater leak in through the backdoor...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> This isn't too far from the MOQish notion that the laws of physics are
> better conceived as patterns of preference. Even the physical is inwardly
> alive and consciously animated to some extent. The "its" count as one of
> the
> spans and wavelengths in this living universe.
>
> [Krimel]
> Rather than altering our notions of "preference" to include a probabilistic
> view of causality; dmb sees Pirsig retreating into this kind of spiritual
> animism.
>
> It has is an ongoing mystery how one can make a claim for a universe that
> is
> "...inwardly alive and consciously animated" and yet deny that one's
> position is not supernatural, even theistic. I'm not even sure that stuff
> qualities as bathwater. After you stuff a towel under the back drop why
> don't you try shaking the handle?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #5: The bumper sticker grab bag...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> You see what these guys are saying?
>
> If you're a scientific materialist and you hear James explain that
> consciousness as an entity, as a Cartesian self, does not exists, you're
> likely to take James as being somewhere in the brain-mind identity camp.
>
> [Krimel]
> No need to engage a different point of view when you can cover your lack of
> breadth and depth with slogans and strawmen. Since dmb engagement with
> intellectual activity is stunted in the 19th century, the materialist
> strawman is a Newtonian projection. Although it went up in flames at least
> by the middle of the 20th century it lives for dmb as a kind of fantasy
> whipping boy.
>
> Note also the second example of the bumper sticker approach: "brain-mind
> identity camp" as though in this label we find a clearly defined group of
> the slack jawed, oblivious to dmb's keen and exhaustive insights.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustation #6: Spinning to blur distinctions...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> You'd think there is no such thing as consciousness per se because the mind
> is just what the brain does, more or less. Most people in this camp will
> back off just a bit and make some qualification, but that's the basic idea.
> But when you read this Fechner-inspired stuff you realize that James had a
> whole different deal in mind. Instead of thinking that the mental is a
> product of the physiological, which is a product of the physical, you see
> that it's more like the physical and the mental have grown up and evolved
> together as two aspects of the One. In fact, James's biographer, Robert
> Richardson, says the quote above is the best statement about the many and
> the One that James ever produced (page 447).
>
> [Krimel]
> Here again we see the strawmen but some are willing to "back off" if "just
> a
> bit" no doubt intimidated by the imagined power of dmb's keen observations.
> Unfortunately dmb offers no actual attack on this position just a
> perfunctory dismissal and retreat into the 19th century. After all, if one
> were to venture into the 21st century it would be really hard to muster
> enough strawmen on this subject to matter.
>
> "The mind is what the brain does..." of course it is and mostly"more"
> rather
> than "less". The "mind," whatever that is supposed to be, is the outcome of
> the process of the nervous system's engagement with the environment. It
> takes the sensory input Fechner so painstaking detailed and converts it
> into
> thought and action. If "consciousness" is a process then the brain is the
> processor. It is the dismissal of this notion that demands some kind of
> sustained defense in the 21st century.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration # 1 redeux: The short form...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> Now think about that pithy little radically empirical slogan. Experience
> and
> reality amount to the same thing.
>
> [Krimel]
> Bullshit lite: Less tedium but still impossible to swallow.
>
> It might actually be meaningful to say "Experience and one's conception of
> reality amount to the same thing."
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #7: The clever signoff or "The Illusion of Cool..."
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [dmb]
> Hmmmm. Consciousness. Maybe I'll give it some thought.
>
> What was the question? Can you state it very specifically?
>
> [Krimel]
> I picture him saying this while polishing his Foster Grant wraparounds
> simultaneously grinding a Marlboro filter beneath his Chuck Taylors;
> Bohemian ironic affections trapping him in the amber of the 50s. Refusing
> the new millennium and feeling really good about it after all color TV is
> just a fad.
>
> Thanks Dave, a truly enlightening post.
>
>
>
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