An Unprejudiced Inquiry into The Question of Being
March 18th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: An Unprejudiced Inquiry into The Question of Being :: An Unprejudiced Inquiry into The Question of Being :: An Unprejudiced Inquiry into The Question of Being :: An Unprejudiced Inquiry into The Question of Being
Bernx at aol.com wrote:
>crifasian@gmail.com writes:
>Descartes himself answers such naive realism in the First Meditation.
>There is no evidence of any “metaphenomenal reality,” since anything
>you try to cite as evidence can be equally present when there is no
>such metaphenomenal reality, such as when the same phenomenon is
>dreamed
>Then better to speak of the epiphenomenal than the metaphenomenal. That
>is as bad as the old Aristotelian habit of speaking of the
>metaphysical. Meta simply indicates neither here nor there whereas Epi
>refers to “contingent to”, in this case, the phenomenon. What is epi to
>a phenomenon indicates a dependance on the phenomenon. One the other
>hand, since all dreams are phenomenolological the reccurance of the
>dream *in actu* would be epiphenomonological.
According to the OED/SE, ‘meta’ (usage 1): Denoting a nature of a higher
order or more fundamental kind.
its use in ‘metaphenomenal’ is intended to point to a reality that is
correlated with our experience of it; but, which *is real* apart from
our experience of it — like the physical moon that continues to exist
even when I’m not looking at it.
originally, epiphenomenalism was as dualistic as the cartesianism to
which it was a reaction; and, it merely denied the two-way interaction
of mind and matter. matter could still affect mind; but, the reverse was
denied.
currently, epiphenomenalism is physicalist. it acknowledges only one
metaphenomenal reality, physical ’stuff’ — matter-energy (matergy in
Jud’s jargon) and space-time. epiphenomenalists admit that there is
phenomenal awareness; but, denies a two-way interaction of matter and
phenomenal awareness. matter generates phenomenal awareness and all its
contents.
thus, to speak of ‘epiphenomenalism’ wouldn’t help Anthony because it
assumes at least one metaphenomenal reality *and* makes an assumption
about the relation between the phenomenological and the
metaphenomenological.
>There is a difference, of course, between what is phenomonalist
>(ontic) and phenomenological qua ontological. If the suffix “ological”
>(the study of) is lost then best step back and soak your head in the
>waters of illogical illusion. Being, of course, is neither
>phenomenological or phenomenal because by logical necessity
>self-predicating or tautological. This was understood by philosophers
>from Parmenides to Kant. It broke down as a form of logic and (as the
>study of) with the double-speak of Hegel’s dialectic by which the the
>necessary prime or archai premise as a tautological given slips down so
>that the entire praxis of the logic is tautological, as is the case
>with the analytic logic, as Kant observed, and which became a further
>catastrophe when the dialectic analytic fell into the hands of both
>Marx and Freud. In that case both the ontological and the
>phenomenological collapsed as mere expressions of the euphemistolistic,
>the semiotic, and the reading of tea leaves.
I think you’ve captured the sense in which philosophy has fallen
downhill like the rock that Sisyphus laboriously rolled up the hill.
however, less needs to be said about “the necessary prime or archai
premise as a tautological given”. as a non-informative predicate,
‘being’ would not be objectionable; but, there is a strong tendency to
add qualities or properties or attributes to being; and, this results in
the illusion that ‘being’ is an informative predicate (a ‘determining’
predicate as opposed to a merely ‘logical’ predicate in Kantian
jargonology)
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
