Letters to Dr. Brewer:
Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 8:57 pm
First, given your expertise on Whitehead, I have to ask:?: did Whitehead or Russell write the quote:
“Humble yourself or the world will do it for you.”
I’ve been quoting it ever since I read it in the newspaper, but I’ve never been able to confirm who I got it from. Google won’t help me; hopefully you can.
That said:
“The argument is very deep but the first stage is to distinguish the world as represented, that is the world as re-presented through complex language, signs and symbols from the world as presented (the phenomenal or experiential world re Schopenhauer "World as Will and Re-presentation). This atomization requires an intellect capable of advanced language where things are named. We then order the names genetically and spatially and into a "conceptual field" that represents the reality of the presented world in a particular area. We check this theoretical conceptual field has the wholeness we find in the presented world using logic and further empirical tests to check for inconsistencies. If it holds together it becomes a theory with its own sign (QM, Relativity, Thermodynamics, Natural selection, Freudian psychology etc. etc). My problem is that many philosophers and scientists think that this re-presented world contains the whole of reality, even worse: it is more real than the actual world.”
Yes, there is something about reality that seems to overflow the language we use to describe it. In fact, I would argue that it is the struggle to bring the tools of language (and by language, I mean language in its many forms such as mathematics or art (more in line with reality that defines our cultural history. Even abstract and surreal approaches are part of it to the extent that they are surrenders to the impossibility of (re)presenting what you describe in your book as a barrage of external data (and what Deleuze would describe as the infinite confronting our finite capacities.
And while you make a good argument as to the catch that comes with limiting ourselves to the “conceptual field”, I would stand in defense (play apologetics for (our use of the tools language of different sorts offer us. Here I stand with Rorty’s pragmatism in recognizing language as a kind of tool we use to adapt to our given environment.
*
“The next movement in this argument is to say that because consciousness plays no part in this underlying biochemical machine, it isn’t a necessary component of the body’s function. This seems to be confirmed by experiments showing how the body makes decisions even before we are aware of them.” -Brewer, Stephen. The Origins of Self (pp. 38-39). . Kindle Edition.
I have always had issues with the Libet experiment. It just seems to me that the subjects were asked do something that most humans are incapable of: make choices in a vacuum. It just seems to me that all Libet was recording was the individual WORKING UP to a choice.
At the same time, what this also suggests is that we have to let go of pure free will and think more in terms of participation, as Ken Taylor of Stanford and Philosophy Talk fame suggests.
“Humble yourself or the world will do it for you.”
I’ve been quoting it ever since I read it in the newspaper, but I’ve never been able to confirm who I got it from. Google won’t help me; hopefully you can.
That said:
“The argument is very deep but the first stage is to distinguish the world as represented, that is the world as re-presented through complex language, signs and symbols from the world as presented (the phenomenal or experiential world re Schopenhauer "World as Will and Re-presentation). This atomization requires an intellect capable of advanced language where things are named. We then order the names genetically and spatially and into a "conceptual field" that represents the reality of the presented world in a particular area. We check this theoretical conceptual field has the wholeness we find in the presented world using logic and further empirical tests to check for inconsistencies. If it holds together it becomes a theory with its own sign (QM, Relativity, Thermodynamics, Natural selection, Freudian psychology etc. etc). My problem is that many philosophers and scientists think that this re-presented world contains the whole of reality, even worse: it is more real than the actual world.”
Yes, there is something about reality that seems to overflow the language we use to describe it. In fact, I would argue that it is the struggle to bring the tools of language (and by language, I mean language in its many forms such as mathematics or art (more in line with reality that defines our cultural history. Even abstract and surreal approaches are part of it to the extent that they are surrenders to the impossibility of (re)presenting what you describe in your book as a barrage of external data (and what Deleuze would describe as the infinite confronting our finite capacities.
And while you make a good argument as to the catch that comes with limiting ourselves to the “conceptual field”, I would stand in defense (play apologetics for (our use of the tools language of different sorts offer us. Here I stand with Rorty’s pragmatism in recognizing language as a kind of tool we use to adapt to our given environment.
*
“The next movement in this argument is to say that because consciousness plays no part in this underlying biochemical machine, it isn’t a necessary component of the body’s function. This seems to be confirmed by experiments showing how the body makes decisions even before we are aware of them.” -Brewer, Stephen. The Origins of Self (pp. 38-39). . Kindle Edition.
I have always had issues with the Libet experiment. It just seems to me that the subjects were asked do something that most humans are incapable of: make choices in a vacuum. It just seems to me that all Libet was recording was the individual WORKING UP to a choice.
At the same time, what this also suggests is that we have to let go of pure free will and think more in terms of participation, as Ken Taylor of Stanford and Philosophy Talk fame suggests.