Dear Jud, and all the interested friends,
Sorry
for the delay, once again, but I do what I can.
I
totally agree on what you wrote (below). But there is a
core point of mine which, I shall admit, you did not understand
well still. Maybe, it has been myself who did not explain this point
enough, or eIse I did it in a too much fragmentary manner. Anyway,
let me try to expose my point in a clearer logical sequence, here and
now.
1.
As I once wrote in a shared document of ours, Jud,
behind
each reification there must be an authority allowing and backing it.
This
idea has been a 1993 intuition of mine. Accordingly, I managed to set
up an European conference, that has been a succes except for the idea
I wanted to promote. Indeed, the applicants spoke and spoke about
whatever argument, but no one of them was interested in questioning
the authority and in deepening criticism-based reasonings.
Lata
Gouveia (latalondon(at)yahoo.co.uk) put this concept in
crystall-clear words, on the WDDM
mailing-list:
“I
always felt it [ie., the
propagation of critical, reason-based
arguments] lacked
mass appeal. It looks complicated, it looks ugly, and it bases itself
on the very
type of language and protocol that it proposes to break away from.”
2.
Anyway, since my 1994 conference,
I immediately realized that only their home authorities could have
called the reification users-addicts to accept messages aimed
deepening concepts such as (self)criticism, questioning the authority
itself, freedom of thought and speek,with
some probability of constructive success. Therefore I had to analyze
the opportunity to enter in touch with their authorities in office. I
considered three main categories of the latter: the political, the
religious and the scientific one
3. I had soon to realize that entering in
touch with the political authority was not the case, because they are
all selfish opportunists only, interested only in increasing their
own political power.
Also the religious authority was not
the case, obviously, because they are all interested only in
propagating Faith-based messages exclusively, quite the opposite of
what I had in mind to do.
Indeed, the scientific authority could
have been best closer to my aims, at least because scientists always
claim they process reason-based reasonings and teachings exclusively.
So I began to study the English language wanting to enter the
Internet in search for some top scientific authority who could have
eventually co-operated with me to propagate my Reason-based
communication model from family education upwards.
You know, this
model is googled under the name “Dialectic Education.”
4.
In the early years 2000 I met Georges
Metanomski. I found him very impressive, not only, but also very
authoritative among the English language scientists, as far as I
could see. We exchanged a number of posts, and - I must confess –
very pleasant and polite at the beginning. Things changed when I
started to urge him with the argument that was at the top of my
concerns: the propagation of the dialectic communication model. Georges
always ducked this argument, and started to repeat ceaselessy
this refrain “ Wait a bit, only a two weeks or so, that I will
work out and give you the propagation know-how you are asking me
for.”
Weeks have passed and have become
years, but all what Georges was able to do, was repeating and
repeating ceaselessly always the same refrain. Nothing less, nothing
more: only the same refrain.
5.
I thought, it could have been a good
thing, if I had answered myself the question which Georges proved
himself to be so much incapable to answer. I wrote an article using
much of the terminology I learned throughout my conversations with
the scientist, plus some quotations and acknowledgments to my (was)
friend Georges, got it edited by a distinguished native English
speaker (Hon. Doug Everingham) and send it to the scientist for a
check. It was about on 2005. The article is free in Jud's website:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/rossin14.htm
6.
To my great surprise, Metanomski got
furious. “I forbid you to make any reference to my name in your
article!”, he barked me, and so I did, by polishing my document
from any such reference, and put the acknowledgements to the rubbish.
Notice that Metanomski made no check and no criticism about the
article, whose contents was just what he calls “propagation”.
Anyway, I did not cease to put into
evidence, every now and then, the paradoxa and inconsistencies which
in my opinion he unavoidably falled into whenever the scientist
wanted to use authoritative language to propagate self-criticism,
the ability of questioning the authority, freedom of thought and
speek (see 1. above).
As the only reply
to my provocations, Metanomski submerged me with insults. He never
made any constructive criticism, not only, but also he managed to
make me become the winner of some “Most Malignant Fellow of the
Year” (on 1997, if I remember well).
7.
More
recently, as you may remember, I succeeded to open a discussion
thread with Georges Metanomski about his wanted “Second
Enlightenment”. He put out a logical sequence whose final item was,
unavoidably, “Propagation”. But, as soon as the first four
theoretical items were completed and I began to urge him to complete
the fifth practical one, once more, he answered his usual refrain:
“Wait a bit, only a two weeks or so, that I will work out and give
you the propagation know-how you are asking me for.” So late,
weeks have passed, one year over has passed, and I did not get any
constructive reply of Metanomski about how to put a “Second
Enlightenment” into practice, namely, “Propagation”, but his
usual insults only.
All
of this is in the Archives.
Well,
what can I add more, dear Jud? You are right, when you stated
(below):
My
own feeling is that you have a tremendous amount to say of great
importance and that Georges is in a similar position.
I have no doubt, the scientific
contents of Metanomski's writings are excellent. But, as soon as it
deals with going to put “what we have to say” to the service of
humankind – for performing which task the role of the top
scientific authority is mandatory (see 2. above) – Metanomski goes
for nuts. What a pity.
BTW, I appreciate Richard's stance, as
he stated that he does not depend on any mastermind.
Best regards,
antonio
On 07/08/2010 14:16, gevans613(at)aol.com wrote:
Dear Jud,
Sorry for the delay. I'm going to insert my remarks to your text
below.
Jud originally wrote:
Dear Antonio:
There is much in what you write. With regard to the reification
*experience* many may consider our criticisms of the modern use of
inherited medieval mumbo-jumbo connected with putative: *properties*
and *essences* of the Gothic era - to be *a fuss about nothing,* but
inadvertent and unthinking logico-linguistic incorrectness is all to do
with the way HUMANS exist (the attributant) and is totally divorced and
ontologically remote from (the attributee) the giraffe's long neck or
the marsupial pouch of the kangaroo.
But we must be unrelenting in our criticism - even of small,
silly ontological transgressions.
Antonio: (new)
"transgressions", against what? My OED suggests "against a
moral principle", which one can reasonably equalize to "a truth" or,
even more aptly, to one's "fundamentals". Let's adopt this last
term from here onwards.
Dear Antonio:
No. I do not wish to adopt this last term now or from here
onwards. I used the word to mean mistake. Perhaps in the Italian
language the word *trasgressione* has a more sinister sense because of
the dominance of the insidious and all pervading malefic doctrines of
the Catholic church? In Britain the word can be used to refer little
mistakes or slips (including inadvertent ones) such as being late for
school, farting at a wedding, or not wearing a tie at a formal
gathering, etc. By transgression I mean my own action of *going beyond or
overstepping some boundary or limit* - but not in terms of a
fundamentalists or quasi-religious limit in the sense of giving in to
temptation and committing a sin against some law laid down by a deity.
I mean that as an eliminativist to concede that the abstraction
*experience* differs in some way from all other abstraction, and that
in the case of *experience* it is something that exists separately from
the human experiencer perhaps as a spiritual partner for *soul.* (which
plainly it is not) and *experience* can therefore be excluded from all
the other abstractives on the list of reifications. I think you are being a bit selective referentially perhaps -
for most dictionaries ( I do not own the large expensive version of the
OED) provide alternative, less *dramatic* definitions of *transgression*.
There is nothing *moral* about eliminativism - it is simply a
paradigmatic neuro-linguistic explanation of how most humans are
unaware of the damage (as well of benefits) of reification as it is now
being applied to all aspects of human society.
Whether individual eliminativists consider themselves (or are
considered by others) to be moral/immoral has nothing to do with it. I
like to think that my eliminativism allows me to distance myself from
all of the opinionated turbulence that goes on in my society and other
societies and just concentrate on tracing the insidious nature of
reification, and how it has insinuated itself into all aspects of human
communication to the extent that even I as an eliminativist find
difficulty in communicating without employing reificative terms either
deliberately because I cannot be bother to find another form of words -
or inadvertently. Its like a disease which - though you fight it - you
have to learn to live with.
Antonio:
Of course, any one who charges another people with
"transgressions", must prior possess some fundamentals of one's
own, don't you agree?
Jud: I agree with you only with regard to the people whom I
consider to be *fundamentalists.* But it all depends on one's
definition of the words: *transgressions* and *fundamentals.*
This sort of conversation reminds me of a Socratic dialogue, in which
typically, as usual, Socrates (Plato's hand-puppet) is questioning one
of his interlocutors as to the meaning of *piety, honour, beauty,* or
any other of the abstractions which formed the main subjects of the
dialogues. Socrates asks his discussant:
*What is honour ... [readers - insert your own abstraction here
- OK - *fundamentalist*]?*
The discussant of course quite naturally provides Socrates with
an example of what he considers to have been an *honourable/fundamentalist
act* performed by some soldier or statesman. Socrates then attacks him
and says something like:
*Yes, some people might interpret that act as honourable/fundamentalist,
but others might think that it was a betrayal of blah, blah, blah -
give me another example or better still, for explain to me what
*honour*/*fundamentalism itself means* for I am not really
interested in your stories of what this soldier did, or that statesman
said, or that wife said of her husband.*
For all of his intelligence Socrates/Plato failed to grasp that
*honour* (or *fundamentalism* or any other abstraction) is purely a
matter of opinion.
The above is a roundabout way of me attempting to provide you my
friend with an answer concerning my own definition of the words: *
transgressions* and *fundamentals.*
As an eliminativist I do not believe that such things as
*transgressions* and *fundamentals.* exist, although I certainly
accept that human fundamentalists exist in the form of politicians and
religionists and others who take the *APPLICATION* of the doctrines to
such extremes as to justify the harming or even the extermination of
people who either disagree with their views, or of whom they simply
believe as a part of their doctrine that the world would be better off
without them, or (short of exterminating them) manipulate society in
such a fashion (either in relation to class, sex, age, religion or
politics, etc) to such an extent as to penalise them and deprive them
of majority benefits.
Jud(earlier)
Why? Because like racism, the corrosive, sulphurous, secondary
drip, drip, drip of cognitively otiose, ontological confusion can only
be combatted with uncompromising zero tolerance.
Antonio: Please notice, every addicted to fundamentals - be it a moral,
or a rational, or a religious, or else a scientific fundamentalism
(Metanomski docet) does combat other's fundamental(ism)s with
uncompromising zero tolerance!
Jud:
The zero-tolerance I am referring basically to my intolerance of
religion from which in my mind almost all of mankind's problems stem.
But of course I would never dream of allowing my intolerance of someone
whose religious beliefs I oppose to lead to a desire to kill him and
others who think like him - unless of course I was convinced that he
wished to kill me and was just waiting the chance to do it. But I do
admit that I feel that society would benefit if religion was not taught
in schools.
As to Georges Metanomski's intolerance of any views which
contradict his own Einsteinean-based views. Presupposing that
these views are unacceptable (and for most people like me it is not
always a case of them being unacceptable, but to non-physicists like me
- not being understandable) to one who disagrees with some of the
abstraction present in his models (which to be fair - he acknowledges,
but claims is unavoidable), and even if one considers that he can
be personally insulting to people who oppose his views, I continue tend
to ignore such things because he does not insult me.
In addition I hold that Georges is a very clever man who have
triumphed over adversity and I can learn from him and that his form of
fundamentalism (the strictly defined sort of fundamentalism I defined
above) is neither fundamentalist in the religious nor in the political
sense. If we suppose or accept that Georges is an Einsteinean (and no
doubt he will tell us whether he is willing to accept that title, or
wishes to add to it or qualify it in some way) then to put him into any
other kind of fundamentalist bracket other than the strictly defined
bracket into which I have placed myself is to suggest that Einstein was
a fundamentalist too. A person's manner is not his doctrine.
My objection to the inclusion of abstractive words like
*energy,* force, power,* and their many synonyms in scientific
explanation is well known. I dream of one day when scientists either
discover what energy is (if it exists - which I believe it does not) or
find ways to replace such abstractions with descriptions like *matergy,
datergy* which enshells the concept of *energised matter* rather than
continuing the myth that something called *energy* exists which is
paranormally separate in some way from concrete entities. If *concrete entities* do not exist then let them provide
names for those individuate *cosmic presences* which do exist and
(for example) dispose of such abstract nouns as *synergy,* which
means: *the working together of two things - muscles or drugs for
example - to produce an *effect* greater than the sum of their
individual *effects.* The term *effect* is not scientific enough and
says nothing - what are needed are names for the *effectuates* those
entities which are *effected objects* or whatever term of their own
they decide to employ.
Some people just do not hit it off together on the internet as
you and I do. So my advice is to accept Georges as he is, or not to
engage in conversation with him at all - it is really as simple as that
- either make allowances for him in view of what he has to say, and
evaluate any perceived benefits of what he has to say that you might
miss by not talking to him - or leave him to discuss with those who
choose otherwise. I have no wish to fall out with anybody - we all have
something important to give in our own ways - and time is short for
most of the regular *oldie* contributors on these groups.
This prompts the important question in my own mind (for I am a
firmly believe that it is far more stupid for one to dupe oneself that
it is to fool other people) am I a fundamentalist? I only appear to be
interested in ontological eliminativism - I once confessed to Richard
that I may have become obsessed by it. The only dictionary entry for
fundamentalism refers to *the theology of or relating to or tending
toward fundamentalism: the interpretation of every word in the sacred
text.* I am not religious - I do not believe anything is sacred - but
does that let me off the *fundamentalist* hook?
Prepare for some long sentences: :-) In the sense that I believe the results of my fundamental
analysis of language in that it allows the people that employ that
language either intentionally or unintentionally (naively) to play
tricks on us - some of which can lead to our death - and in the sense
that I hate people lying to me ( either intentionally or
unintentionally) and playing tricks on me - I believe that my ideas and
the questions they raise are fundamental ones. Finally, if I am to be
ruthlessly truthful to myself I am willing to say that:
If to be a fundamentalist means that in my case, believing as I
do, that to have a fundamental understanding of the world means having
a fundamental understanding of the way in which language affects our
fundamental understanding of that world, and feel that only a
fundamentally eliminativist study of the pros and cons of abstraction
and its use in human communication allows us to move towards such a
fundamental understanding of the lies and verbal trickery which we have
all experienced, and considering that I am a person convinced enough
in my ideas to exclude any other religio-paranormal explanation for the
cosmos and all therein, and in the sense of strictly excluding all
other meanings of the term *fundamentalists* religious or otherwise
associated with transcendentalist bomb-throwers and the like - then I
am a fundamentalist.
Antonio: Your above sentence splits us living beings into two
main categories: those who do share into your very fundamentals, and
those who do not.
Jud: Yes. What you say is true in relation to my new, long,
unbroken paragraph above (which you have not read before) of which I am
very proud, means yo and I and others on this list are in a different
category.
Antonio:
No wonder then, if each category combats the other with
uncompromising zero tolerance, with more or less polite means, see the
Talibani. Jud:
I feel that we are far too tolerant of intolerance of the
Talibani fundamentalist type. But the root course of Talibani
intolerance is the underlying existence of general religion/transcendentalism
which underlies it. As a doctor of medicine the treatment of source of
a disease (an open sewer) as treatment of the disease presented by
some child in your surgury.
Anything which provides high profile or low profile support for
the belief in the paranormal or the *immaterial* Even if the occult
manifests itself in the form of little old ladies baking cakes for the
local Church's May Day celebration, or (through ignorant stupidity)
philosophers infecting the brains of innocent students with paranormal
interpretations of physical * phenomena, * they are (if only innocently
in the sense of a butterfly's wings affecting a hurricane -
concatenationally providing intellectual succour and support for the
Taliban.
Jud:
Philosophical transcendentalists, like the more fanatical
religious variety of zealots of unreason, all have a gluttonous
appetite for obfuscation, and if they are allowed to get away with
minor metaphysical confabulation and sneak in their destructive
dualisms in what they claim to be insignificant (all a fuss about
nothing) instances, it not only provides sustenance, support and
confirmation of dualistic madness (as a principle of nature) for
fanatics in their dealings with the more grotesque versions of dualism,
but it also sows the seeds of unreason and irrationality in the minds
of the young.
Antonio:
I would distinguish an "inside dialectics" and a "outside
dialectics", here. This difference depends IMHO on the more or less
rigorous "zero tolerance" by which parents imprint their fundamentals
onto their offspring, and by which teachers imprint their fundamentals
(religious or scientific fundamentals are exactly the same) onto their
pupils. In the absence of any dialectical confrontation between
parents-teachers, the young won't learn and practice any "inside
dialectics" as the only tool allowing them to resolve their existential
conflicts in the inside. They will be only enabled-supported to perform
violent "outside dialectics" with tolerance zero against everyone who
does not think like them, i.e.., who is not addicted to their same
fundamentals.
Jud
In this currently dangerous modern world the west must abjure
any intellectual weakness of the fallible and their ontological
combobulation and sort the monist wheat from the transcendental chaff -
otherwise culturally, economically and politically and spiritually
(whatever that means to you) - we are doomed.
Antonio
: hmmm. It seems to me, we should be rather learnt how to abjure
every kind of addiction to fundamentalism, encompassing both the
religious one of the Talibani and the scientific one of Georges
Metanomski. Indeed, dear Jud, as far as I can see, "experience" as the
kernel of scientific truth is not a matter of communication, as some
silly scientists pretend as. "Experience" deals with one's modality of
approaching the sensible world outside. I mean, all what a scientist
can tell me, it is how he or she processed the empirical infos he-she
sensed, and not the live empirical modality itself.
Jud:
Believe me - I am not splitting hairs I believe that whilst what
you say is absolutely right - but at the same time *experience* does
not exist. I submit that what exists is the scientific experiencer
(the experiential scientist) approaching the sensible world outside in
such a manner as to explain the empirical results his or her
investigations in such a manner that the target audience can understand.
Antonio:
Hence the way one approaches the (revealed) truths, encompassing
the scientific truths, becomes unavoidably a matter of faith, since I
have no means to reproduce the scientific experiment which the told
truth stems and comes from.
Jud:
My own approach towards mathematicians/scientists IS NOT to
accept what they say as revealed truths if I do not understand them.
For example. I do not understand much of what Georges writes (though I
assume that their are fellow scientists out there who understand it
all) but I still find it interesting to read his work for what parts of
it I understand. I do understand (though incompletely) his rejection
of many of the more lunatic scientific theorems - but have great
difficulty in grasping much else.
Antonio:
Of course, skepticism and critical thinking helps provide our
monitorial brain with some self-defence against the truth-tellers who
suffocate everyday us PITS with their enduring idiocies, from
politicians to rampant scientists and other such priests. "Ok., Ok., -
the scientist claims - skepticism and critical thinking is the best
modality of approaching the sensible reality outside: but not in my
back-yard!"
Jud:
Perhaps like me it is best to try to stick to philosophy and
ontology. It is very difficult though for unfortunately (or
fortunately) philosophy and ontology are not remote subjects entirely
separate from the physical sciences - particularly for people like you
and I who are physicalists, and it figures that we will be constantly
involved in assessing our own ontological conclusions against those
which form part of the science of physics and cosmology.
How we accomplish this with the physicists with whom that means
we will come into contact is up to the person concerned and the
scientist concerned.
My own feeling is that you have a tremendous amount to say of
great importance and that Georges is in a similar position. I think it
is in all our interests to make an effort to exchange information in a
mutually beneficial way, not only for you, but for others on this list
like me (and some lurkers too) who enjoyed reading and thinking about
your discussions together. What do you think?
Sincerely,
Jud
Reifications (like . . . .
Antonio Rossin.
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