Response to Jud
July 20th, 2006, search relatedRelated posts :: The Truth about Being Jewish/Reading Heidegger :: Response to Jud :: A power-ful hermeneutical hiatus in Heidegger :: [Moderation] Heidegger Email List?
Jud,
In the unintelligible morass that you call eliminative determinism,
you are running into a few fundamental problems. First of all,
conceptualizing this methodology is prima facie contradictory in even
finding a place to take hold. When you say that only things that
actually exist as things are real (or existing), then you find a very
difficult time defining just what those things are. If one can take
just about any of the supposed things as an acceptable level of
examination, then it makes no sense to talk about anything at all if
not also things that could be referred to as states.
Case in point – in the analogy of soup or continuous stuff (principle
being a lack of nothingness) one must presuppose some structural
level (especially if not the most physically basic) from which to
examine. In this presupposition, no level can take precedent over any
other as long as they are all definable by the least common
denominator (no doubt what you would consider as the only real
container of truth, or just what is). Therefore, it follows that
states must exist defined as the most basic physical configuration of
the world that gives rise to what we see at any moment. You can call
me a causal eventity and yourself a causal eventity and claim that
nothing actually occurs between us, but this is as much a useful
fiction as the ideas you are trying to malign. Because I can
characterize us two “separate” causal eventites at a more basic level
that includes us both (as well as the space between us), then
whatever is within a causal eventity that causes change could be said
to be acting between us. Therefore you have lost hold of your
elimination of gerundive constructions and actions and states.
Ironically, to claim that any arbitrarily characterized level of a
causal eventity had an existential modality would be akin to adding a
Heideggerian aspect to it instead of more scientifically explaining
only the common denominator. So the eliminative determinist is then
chased all the way down to the most basic level of things, from which
he cannot escape to even mention a breath about what happens at the
level of humans, that level that we are trying to give meaning to
through philosophy.
Ryan_______________________________________________
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heidegger at soca.ecu.edu.au
