Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA26900 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 3 Aug 2001 08:14:54 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 02:18:45 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Macguffin Message-ID: <3B6A0A05.29797.39568EA@localhost> In-reply-to: <3B69BAAD.17027.25F6BFF@localhost> References: <3B69FA0E.369E2D80@pacbell.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 2 Aug 2001, at 20:40, joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
With syntax error repaired.
> On 2 Aug 2001, at 18:10, Bill Spight wrote:
>
> > Dear Joe,
> >
> > > > > Neither is the word "giraffe" really a tall, long-necked,
> > > > > four-legged, leaf-eating african denizen, but the word stands
> > > > > for, that is, symbolically represents, its referent, as does
> > > > > the personal pronoun.
> > > >
> > > > And what, pray tell, is the referent for that "I"?
> > > >
> > > For you, it is that dynamically recursive conscious
> > > self-awareness, that emerged from your material substrate brain as
> > > you developed from infancy, which asked that question. For me, it
> > > is the one that answered it.
> >
> > But that "I", for me, depends on my brain, and could not have been a
> > giraffe. That's the illusion I was referring to.
> >
> The fact that the self depends upon its material substrate brain for
> its existence is a point in favor of the existence of the self, not an
> argument against it. But your existence is not an illusion, for
> existence is an a priori of efficacy. To do, one must be. You could
> not have chosen to ask an intentional, self-referent question coded in
> a symbol system, and then actually done so, without existing as an
> intentional, self- consciously aware, symbolizing entity with free
> choice possessed of a modicum of causal efficacy. Not only that, but
> let's look at the statement "the idea that there is a self is a
> delusion". Well, either there is a self or there isn't. If there is
> a self, then the idea that there is a self is true, and there is no delusion, If
> there isn't a self, however, there would be no one to be deluded, and
> delusion requiring a deludee to exist as delusion, once again, there
> could be no delusion. There is no wriggle room between the
> absurdity-killing horns of this viciously lethal logical dilemma.
> Some people maintain that the self is a construct people may use in
> some situations and not in others, without coming to grips with the
> consequences of the answer to the question of who constructed the
> construct, and who chooses to or not to use it in particular
> situations. Then there are those selves who self-contradictorally
> deny that selves - including their own self - exist, and therefore not
> only display incoherence (for when one rejects logic, as one does when
> one insists that the insister doesn't exist - the very definition of
> self-contradiction - one cannot even argue a position, for one would
> have to use the selfsame logic one has already rejected in order to do
> that), but in addition display their ignorance of their own
> incoherence; in other words, not only are they nonsensical, but they
> are oblivious to this fact. Most of these people, who reject the
> evidence of their own senses and cognitions to assert what cannot be
> if they are even able to choose to accept or reject such apodictically
> self-evident evidence, are in memebotic thrall to an eastern religious
> meme which imposes its own filters to logic, reason and rationality,
> much as a certain western religious meme imposes the same filters
> regarding evidence for evolution. Such people, even more self-
> contradictorally, are emotionally atteched to the delusion that they
> do not exist; in other words, they have bizarrely bound up their self-
> esteem, their self-concept, even their sense of self-worth, with the
> religios dogma-based fantasy that they, as selves, do not and cannot
> exist. All one can do when one confronts such people, who are
> actually self-deluded enough to spend their selves in the service of
> denying that they even possess them, is to sadly shake one's head and
> walk away, consoling oneself with the thought that dinosaurs could not
> survive a novel physical environment, and that perhaps ideas which
> confront evolving knowledge, such as nonselfism and creationism, will
> mercifully (for the sake of those who would otherwise become infected
> and inflicted by such transparent fallacies) follow the same course. >
> Best, > > Bill > >
> =============================================================== > This
> was distributed via the memetics list associated with the > Journal of
> Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission > For
> information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) > see:
> http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit >
>
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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