Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA08332 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 17 Dec 2000 22:10:02 GMT Subject: Re: Self-defense Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 17:06:52 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <20001217220508.AAA29335@camailp.harvard.edu@[204.96.32.178]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Robin Faichney --
>> Or is it perhaps that what you don't call the self is the same thing I do
>> call it?
>
>That's possible, too. (Ignoring the rhetorical negation, of course.)
>In fact, the equivocal nature of the word is primary for me. When I'm
>not arguing with those who insist that the self is unequivocally real,
>I take the view that the concept is too complex and vague to have a
>referent that's EITHER simply real or simply unreal. This has the
>practical (and I do mean PRACTICAL) consequence that it can be used or
>left aside as appropriate in any given context.
So, you're talking about a set of doctrines that can be used to offer a
world-view.
You are not talking about the fact that we as a species inhabit our
language and our natures with the spoken and the written 'I', or about
the developmental exegesis of the self as the quality of conscious life
that demands that- the 'self-awareness' that so many experiments support
and that is not seen in other species.
The self of which you speak (or don't speak, depending upon the practical
course such admission would present), that can or cannot be, depending
upon your point-of-view (who's point of view, I ask?), is the content of
the philosophical concern of a non-theistic religion that broke off from
a animistic one a few thousand years ago.
Even in that brief time where I felt I understood 'atonement', I did not
think it to be 'selflessness'. In the 'no-thought' states I've reached
through meditation I never considered my being to be absent, nor did I
lose awareness of it. A human who does not know who or where he is is not
a very useful human. Sort of loses all his practicality....
- Wade
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