http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-Are-We-Monists-Moaning-About-tp7593064p7593071.html
simultaneously. Even a hardcore materialist will admit that
Marchal's theory, which is developed in terms of modal logic. His book
introduction. Not sure what an English major might make of it though
> Dear Friammers,
>
>
>
> The subject line is the title of an article I am thinking about writing for the
> Annals of Geriatric Maundering, and I want your help. If you think that I am
> offering you an opportunity to waste your time, in service of advancing my
> career, you are, of course exactly correct. Some of you have accused me of
> starting a fight on FRIAM when a good scholar would actually check out large,
> heavy books from the library. That criticism is precise and apt. My excuse is
> I have two disabilities for true scholarship: my eyesight sucks, and I am
> lazy. So, here we go.
>
>
>
> To be a monist is first and foremost to be NOT a dualist. The most familiar
> form of dualism is the mind/body dualism, which is so embedded in our language
> that it is hard to speak without depending on it. According to this dualism,
> there are two kinds of stuff, mind and matter. Dualists like to talk about the
> interaction of these two kinds of stuff, and are delighted when they discover
> isomorphisms between events in consciousness and events in the brain. They
> like to discuss such topics as “information” and “representation”. Dualists
> are fond of the subject object distinction, and are enthralled by the mysteries
> of “inner” states. They like to talk about inverted spectrums. They hail the
> Privacy of Mind. Most of you are closet dualists. You LIKE to think you are
> materialists, but if you were materialists you would have to be monists, and
> you wouldn’t like that, as you will plainly see. I should confess that
> dualists, particularly closet dualists, drive me crazy. Just sayin’. And as
> I have assured you many times, I love you all anyway. In fact, probably would
> have died years ago, if you had not kept me active.
>
>
>
> Dualists are flanked on one side by pluralists and on the other by monists.
> Pluralists are plainly crazy, and, besides, I don’t know any, so we won’t
> bother with pluralism. Monism is clearly the way to go. There are two
> familiar kinds of monism: idealism and materialism. An idealist insists that
> everything real consists of ideas and relations between ideas; a materialist
> insists that everything real consists of matter and its relations. If you ask
> an idealist about matter and s/he will say, “What is this “matter” of which you
> speak? All we have is ideas about matter. If you ask a materialist about
> ideas, he will say, “What are these “ideas” of which you speak? Ideas are just
> arrangements of matter” Of the two, I prefer materialism. It is easier for me
> to reduce ideas to relations amongst matter than it is to reduce matter to
> relations among ideas. But neither of these forms of monism seem quite honest
> to me, because each implies the other. To put it bluntly, realists and
> materials are all closet dualists.
>
>
>
> The remaining option is “neutral” monism. Being a neutral monist is very hard
> because people demand that you answer the question, “Of what does everything
> real consist?” It is VERY hard to answer that question without becoming a
> closet dualist. The answer requires some sort of noun (or gerund) and
> therefore, any response implies its opposite or absence, and thus relapses into
> closet dualism.
>
>
>
> One possibility I have considered is “event monism” . Everything real consists
> of events and their relations. I like the concept of event because it does not
> conjure up its opposite or absence quite so relentlessly. What is a non-event
> or the absence of an event, really? It’s an event in itself, right? We speak
> of days when nothing happened, but we don’t really mean it. Something DID
> happen; it just wasn’t very interesting. On the other hand, it does not
> accommodate “relations” talk very well.
>
>
>
> A extreme solution is to take a kind of mathematical notational approach and
> just go for the relations: “Everything that is real consists of [ ] and its
> relations”; i.e., everything real consists of [[[[[[[[[ ]…]….]….] etc. ad
> infinitum. In words, “Everything real consists of relations and their
> relations.
>
>
>
> Neither of these solutions is very satisfying and both are rhetorically
> ungainly. By default, have started to call myself as an “Experience Monist”.
> When people look at me slyly and ask, “Experience of what?” I say, “Of other
> experiences”. And when they inevitably ask, “What was the first experience
> of?”, I ask them , “How many first experiences were there?” After they say,
> “One,” I ask. “And how many subsequent experiences have there been?” And when
> they answer, “Oh, gosh, lots. Almost an infinite number.” I say, “Well, then
> let’s deal with the first one after we have dealt with all the others, mmmmm?”
> You call this cheap sophistry, but I think the line of argument is fair because
> our obsession with “origins” (or “oranges”, for that matter) smacks of
> theology, and I am thoroughly fed up with theology. “Let’s begin in the
> middle,” I say, “And not spend so much time worrying about the beginning and
> the end.”
>
>
>
> And now we get to the crazy bit, the part where I imagine that FRIAMmers might
> help out. This conception of The Real always reminds me of a Turing Machine.
> That I make this connection might seem odd to you. You might wonder what a
> flunked-out Harvard English major is doing with thoughts about a Turing
> Machine. Fair question. So how is it that I imagine a Turing Machine?
>
>
>
> A Turing Machine (in my imagination) is a device that is capable of only three
> operations, punching a tape, moving a tape, and reading a tape. Uh, oh, I need
> a 4^th. I need it to be able to punch a tape and move a tape on the basis of
> what it finds on the tape. Oh, gosh, I need a 5^th. I need there to be
> punches on the tape NOT punched by the machine itself. Oh, and a 6^th: the
> survival of the machine needs to depend on anticipating patterns on the tape
>
>
>
> OH CRAP! I THINK I JUST BECAME A DUALIST!
>
>
>
>
> Has anybody written an article entitled, “What does the Turing Machine know?”
> Would a flunked-out Harvard English Major understand it? Could you give me the
> link?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
>
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
by Dr. Strangelove
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
by Dr. Strangelove