Re: Quote of the week
Posted by
Steve Smith on
Jun 05, 2011; 10:27pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Quote-of-the-week-tp6442957p6443330.html
Alan Costall, by way of Eric Charles Sez:
naive realism leads to physics, and that physics
undercuts naive realism,
leaving the whole thing a big mess
It's a bit wordy for a Zen Koan but I think he's on the right track!
One things many philosophers might point out in response to
such an
assertion, is that we don't have a very good handle on the
notion of
"determined'. In fact, there are quite a few big-named dead
white guys, who
would say that physical causality and mental causality are
equally illusory
(and by that, I mean, completely illusory). Thus, one of the BIG
challenges for
a realist philosophy is articulating a theory of causality. It
is not nearly as
simple as basic physics, with its naive realism, might make you
think.
In the last real chapter of my up-coming book on Holt (Nick
circulated
his chapter a little bit ago), Alan Costall argues (among other
things) that
naive realism leads to physics, and that physics undercuts naive
realism,
leaving the whole thing a big mess.
Eric
On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 04:30 PM,
Marcos
[hidden email]
wrote:
Not to mention, the white elephant in the room
(which I brought up to
Murray Gell-Mann to no avail), the relationship of
consciousness to matter, and
by implication: physics. To say consciousness is
only a emergent
property of matter, is to say that we're all
deterministic robots, however
transient within the view of cosmological history.
That position, for me, is no longer tenable.
mark
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Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant
Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA
16601
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org