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Gary. C. Moore is a well-known and celebrated thinker and commentator of some stature amongst the Internet's worldwide philosophical community. His assiduously researched, trenchant analyses and reviews of the works of Martin Heidegger and other metaphysicians, together with his searching explorations of Greek and Oriental Philosophy and Religion, literature and film appear in the archives of many of the web's foremost mailing lists.  Delivered in a liquid prose redolent of a poet rather than a philosopher, his writings are eagerly read by all lovers of philosophical hermeneutics, interpretation and investigation. He is also held  in some affection, as well  as  respect, because of  his patient, friendly and helpful attitude - particularly to any 'philosophical newbies'. POLITICS AND NOMINALIST THOUGHT IN UBERTO ECO The Letters of Gary. C. Moore Gary C. Moore - Richard Sansom - Antonio Rossin Discuss Uberto Eco's 'The Name of The Rose.' SECTION ONE GARY C. MOORE: Chapter *Nones* [142-154] is of great interest in linking nominalist thought to practical application of nominalist logic as well as nominalist political theory [to a lesser degree] along with William of Baskerville last statement in the chapter of particular interest RICHARD SANSOM: Oddly enough I just finished that chapter [Nones] and what I remember most are the remarks made by the abbot and Williams rejoinders. I will read it over again per your remarks. I liked Adso last statement to himself, which I presume translates as *save me from the lions*? GARY C. MOORE: That chapter reminded me, in its discussions of heresies, of the proliferations of Communist heresies under Stalin. The later were more intentionally directed and deliberate but, as Eco [Adso at first, and then with William] explains in this chapter and a slightly later one, another *nones* starting at page 196, there are political and economic forces deliberately utilizing these heretical movements for their own ends. In the second *NONES* chapter, Adso brings up Williams use of the term *the simple* which is not at all simple to him and William explains why, a multi-faceted kaleidoscope of contractions and expansions of its meaning depending of who is identified as such and who uses the term. That this miasma grew up more or less *naturally* in the Church - emphasizing the Church because of its claim to political power while still, in various degrees of *good conscience* vide Sartre, trying to be a spiritual *shepherd* - is fascinating and disturbing. Much of what I have read so far needs to be discussed in much greater detail. I can give you translations of most of the Latin passages because I have THE KEY TO THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Haft & White/White. Most of the time they are unimportant or can be figured out of their own, but some are very important and interesting like the one on the LABYRINTH. So ask and give pages so I can locate/correlate. Must go TRANSLATIONS OF THE LATIN PHRASES AND SENTENCES "G H Habib" Sat Aug 11, 2007 Dear Mr. Gary C. Moore, It was wonderful to receive your mail. You would be pleased to know that I am translating The Name of the Rose into Bengali and the translation is being serially published in a daily news paper in Bangladesh. It would be very helpful for me if you could provide me with the translations of the Latin phrases as Idon't have the book name key to The Name of the Rose. Your cooperation will be highly appreciated. Looking forward to your response. G H Habib, Lecturer, Dept of English, Chittagong University, Chittagong. khokonghh@yahoo.com khokonghh. GARY C. MOORE: Dear Doctor Habib, I would be delighted to participate in your venture! My edition of The Name of the Rose. is the Harcourt and Brace large paperback edition in the Harvest in Translation series. THE KEY TO THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Adele J. Haft, Jane G. White, and Robert J. White refers to page numbers of the hard bound edition and my paperback edition. In the *Authors Notes* they say Papal Bull titles are not translated since they are just the beginning first few words of the Bull giving one no important information and so are not translated. All translations of the Bible are from the King James version. I shall also try to identify the historical characters in the book, for instance, Ubertino is historical. I am just starting NAMING THE ROSE: ECO, MEDIEVAL SIGNS, AND MODERN THEORY by Theresa Coletti which combines observations of the novel with Ecos POSTSCRIPT and philosophical writings like SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE. Umberto Eco is a major philosopher in his own right in the West. Many points he deliberately makes in the novel are deliberately anachronistic to make the point that Medieval and Modern thought are not very far apart. For instance, at pages 492.29-30/600.1-2, Eco quotes *Er muoz gelichessame die leiter abewerfen, so er an ir ufgestigen*, ENGLISH: *One must cast away, as it were, the ladder, so that he may begin to ascend it* which is a version [Medievalized Eckhart-type German?] of Ludwig Wittgensteins *Er muss sozusagen die Leiter megwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist*, ENGLISH: *He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it* from Wittgensteins TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS (GERMAN: LOGISH-PHILOSOPHISCHE ABHANDLUNG,) translated into English by Pears and McGuiness that was first published in 1921/1922 under the auspices of his personal friend Bertrand Russell. THE KEY is very incomplete - for instance, the above allusion is missed - and anyone else who has additional information please contribute. I shall do this in a forthcoming series of my own that is a COMMENTARY ON THE NAME OF THE ROSE. I shall start at the beginning of the novel and try to bring in other references to the best of my ability RICHARD SANSOM: I re-read the Nones chapter and came away with several interpretations. First, there is the impassioned defense of glorified objects of beauty that allegedly testify to the *power and holiness of the abbey,* but also celebrates the magnificence of the Holy Nativity ... etc. etc. This, of course, is in stark contrast to Williams and the Spirituals profession of the value of poverty and the poverty of Christ. William cannot, out of simple courtesy, object to the abbots pronouncements on the precious and expensive objects and he hold his tongue - mostly. The abbot also says *.that homage must also be paid through the exterior ornament of the sacred vessel, because it is profoundly right and fitting that we serve our Savior in all things totally. He who not refused to provide for us, totally and without reservation. * In addition to justifying his religious materialism, he admits, to an exact opposite of Williams poverty doctrine in that he infers that Christ indeed provides this expensive religious artifacts. The whole discussion of heresy turns on this point. It is essentially political and economic. Power is leaving the agricultural countryside and the monasteries out side the cities because of the declining use of barter and the growing use of money and banking. Usury is becoming such a powerful economic force that the Church is being forced to cease denouncing it as the greatest of sins - and hence the relative decline of anti-Semitism in Italy compared to Germany where the First Crusade started under Peter the Hermit with the extermination of the Jewish community of the Rhineland, with massive Jewish immigration to Poland, terminated for a while by the persecution initiated by Martin Luther who expected the Jews to adopt the Reformation as the true validation of Judaism and was grievously disappointed - and essentially just ignoring it because it is becoming as dependent upon the bankers as the city merchants already are. Eco, through his characters, constantly associates heresy as the use of the desperate poor by both immediately local political powers, merchants, princes and bishops, and even national level politics of Popes and emperors, turning them against their enemies as the *evil rich*. The play of power abusing the needs of the poor goes constantly back and forth from using them as tools against your enemy, having to confront them as tools of your political/economic enemy, and the aftermath where they are no longer useful and THEN are therefore *heretics*. In this constant play of politics from village against village to the rivalry between Potentate and Pope, heresy and orthodoxy, even good and evil themselves, become utterly meaningless. With William - and Ubertino - an actual historical figure I found out this time around - the only and highly ambiguous distinction between orthodoxy is the acknowledgement of the power of the Church - but then WHO is the Church? NO ONE unequivocally says John XXII and almost everybody says he is either evil or out rightly the Antichrist Himself. The movement from monolithic, overall conceptions of the Church AND ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING THAT CONCEPT GOVERNED INCLUDING THE NATURE OF GOOD AND EVIL ITSELF is literally reflected in the rejection of Neo-Platonism [that very naturally supported *supernatural* concepts] by Thomas Aquinas to the growing insistence on the individual object of sense experience as the sole ground of all knowledge in Aquinas, more so in John Duns Scotus, drastically so in Roger Bacon and William of Ockham [skepticism and atheism are British conspiracies - Scots and Anglos are all atheists] culminating in my mind at this point in time in Father Paolo Sarpi, official theologian of the Republic of Venice, who is an explicit atheist and materialist. So the whole of the political and economic change of Europe is immediately reflected in the change of the nature of Reality from the Reality of the Ideas in Platonism to the reality of individual objects in Aquinas and the development of nominalism in Scotus and Ockham. RICHARD SANSOM: The other thing the abbot does is to constantly conflate various sects into one heretical bundle, as if heresy is reified into some palpable shroud that threatens the true church and the empire. I thought the following exchange was quite telling in this regard: Abbot: Will you tell me, William, you who know so much about heretics that you seem to be one of them, where the truth lies? William: Nowhere, at times. [William said, sadly] Abbot: You see? You yourself can no longer distinguish between on heretic and another. To me, this clearly points out Williams anti-Platonism and his denial of absolutes - something that the Church cannot tolerate. I would have to do research into the Catharists and Fraticelli to understand more about their disagreements, etc. As for Williams last remark in that chapter, I assume that you are referring to the statement responding to Adso: *Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?* I find the structure of this question curious: *would have felt at home?* Is he thinking of Genesis here? There is a lurking suggestion that God no longer feels at home anywhere.... GARY C. MOORE: We need to go into much greater detail starting from the beginning of the novel and the beginning of the postscript. One of Ecos growing philosophical positions is that present day philosophical approaches reflect both in their likenesses and their differences the philosophies of the past and that one cannot understand the present at all until one understands why the things we consider important now became important in the first place. And, secondly, and even more important the different between what we state explicitly versus all the things we do not state but just assume without any clear statement at all and yet are primary in the very motivation why we raise these questions in the manner that we do. All motivation comes from the past. But the *past* is a mixture of the explicit and the ignored, implicit, subconscious, evaded, what we do not want to talk about - or - are UNABLE to talk about even if we want to. All our philosophical problems, whatever we believe, come from, are reactions to, theological roots. Therefore for any one person at all their *philosophy* is formed mostly by what they reject and very little what they positively affirm - if anything at all in the final analysis. So philosophy - and politics and economics - essentially go in unrecognized and inexact but approximate cycles of varied but fundamental likeness. In this sense one can see socialism, in the most broad and inclusive sense, as a kind of Platonism and the problems nominalism reflects and introduces in the disjointed, logically inconsistent politics and economics of *today* that wants to Idealize certain things - family values and faith - yet recognizes money as the true primary reality and value of our lives - reflecting again the conflict between the city and the countryside of the 1300s. RICHARD SANSOM: Aug 13, 2007 I find that the Nones chapter, starting on page 196, to be quite telling and quite rich. It is a quasi-Socratic exchange between William and Adso There is a great deal that is packed in these 13 ½ pages that I will try to synopsize: 1) Adso asks about *differences,* meaning, he is confused as about language as it deals with universals and accidental, versus substantial forms. While the case put deals with heretics, especially as the abbot discussed them, it is really one of the Aristotelian versus the Platonic take on ontology. William tried to use the analogy of a river delta to the various heresies and church doctrine, but in the end, Adso confesses that he understands less and less and William tells him to forget the river analogy.[I thought it a weak and confusing one myself, mainly if one extends naturally the metaphor and sees all of the deltas streams going into a single ocean - what does that signify?!. Perhaps a destructive Diaspora of dogma or belief?] 2) It is easy to transform the discussion of differences and heretics into the broader interpretation of the use of language in categorizing groups, ideas and movements as the needs demand. Today we witness the same thing the abbot did - classifying by name and thus branding for the purposes of easily accomplished denigration. [intifada, jihad, liberal, Catholic, Christian, socialist, etc.] Names carry the weight of entrenched dogma and belief systems and today we see them used, as they have always been used as tools of deception and manipulation. 3) William uses the term *simple* to describe those who [at least originally] have a kind of pure awareness of justice, truth, fairness, etc. but are corrupted by movements who use them as fodder. I love what William said, quoting Bonaventure: *.the wise must enhance conceptual clarity with the truth implicit in the actions of the simple.* [I may be wrong here, but the concept of the *simple* sounds somewhat Rousseauian?] 4) William tries to explain universal truth and universals [a constant theme in the book] within the context of an all-knowing God and has difficulty reconciling them. He says: *You understand, Adso, I must believe that my proposition works, because I learned it by experience; but to believe it I must assume there are universal laws. Yet I cannot speak of them, because the very concept that universal laws and an established order exist would imply that God is their prisoner, whereas God is something absolutely free, so that if He wanted, with a single act of His will He could make the world different.* IMO this conundrum lies at the heart of any or all religious belief - or should lie there. Adso sums up what he has heard with an insightful question: *And so, if I understand you correctly, you act, and you know why you act, but you don't know why you know that you know what you do?* [a statement that is the nub of all neurological research and all philosophy!] There is much more to say but I will stop here for now. I cannot match your [Garys] erudition in this matter, but I will keep having a go! GARY C. MOORE: ref: 1aGCM] This seems to be a very sensitive subject whose sensitivity I have never been aware of before. Eco actually, especially in his Aquinas book, makes the point relatively clearly, and Jud Evans does a good deal to push the same point - but I have not seen it plainly and bluntly said in an unequivocal fashion that all we know, all, is accidents - even natural laws, even mathematics in all of its branches - in reality we know these things historically, that is, in an accidental linear occurrence of learning, that is, how each of us as pure individuals learn the things we know - which means, however much we can say we agree on certain common truths, each of us learned them in a different fashion from each other. This means that although we intersect our different linear lines of learning at certain points and communicate some intelligible truth, nonetheless even knowing the sum of the angles of a triangle equal 90 degrees is approached in a completely different context by each of us and therefore must mean something different to each of us even though we do seem to possess some real ground of agreement in common knowledge. However, with this realization, one knows then actual *agreement* is an ambiguous thing even on such a narrowly defined subject - which means, as broader subjects are broached, real agreement declines rapidly and abstractions, as the words themselves, act as catchwords literally catching for each person what one perceives as similitudes as to what the other person is saying. Thereby one can have a discussion, think everyone agrees as to the premises but come to greatly differing conclusions. The point Eco makes, when push comes to shove, we know no substantial forms. Substance as it is properly defined does not change through time. I think people have created a great number of equivocations about this, but the bottom line is everything changes with time. In an age of scientific ignorance, one could pretend something endures the same through a period of time. But now we know from any point of view, subjective or objective, observer or observed, perception of something actually enduring as the same from moment to moment is false. This is what happens when we cut theology out of all aspects of the equation - and even as I say that I am readmitting theological concepts through the back door in order even to say *all*. It is like erasing your footsteps in the sand as you walk along. You either must admit a purely subjective point of view or admit absolutely no point of view at all. Complete objectivity would erase the observer. RICHARD SANSOM: 1bRS] While the case put deals with heretics, especially as the abbot discussed them, it is really one of the Aristotelian versus the Platonic take on ontology. William tried to use the analogy of a river delta to the various heresies and church doctrine, but in the end, Adso confesses that he understands less and less and William tells him to forget the river analogy.[I thought it a weak and confusing one myself, mainly if one extends naturally the metaphor and sees all of the deltas streams going into a single ocean - what does that signify?!. Perhaps a destructive Diaspora of dogma or belief?] GARY C. MOORE: ref: 1bGCM] The case of heresy is a case of perception and points of view. Eco sees heresy no longer as supporting a set of beliefs contrary to the majority but as the definition of one party by outsiders. Literally the control of who one is can be taken out of ones own hands, first, simply by a name. A name is a label. The word is the thing. Heretics are no longer human beings but things with labels and are not only processed as things but learn to think of themselves as things. They persist, they endure through time as a such-and-such either in the eye of the observer or in the presumed eye of self-perception that has been seized by the word as thing. This is why the heretic is defined externally as a heretic and the purported heretic defines all those who call him a heretic heretics. It is merely an empty word game that ends in death. One way Eco shows this - and I also got this from David Hume in his history of England - is that the heretic follows the same formulae of speaking as those who condemn him simply reversing the object of condemnation. It seems something silly in the extreme except the obstinacy of both parties can only end in the death of one party. The contest of opinions - hardly even opinions any more, just meaningless formulae of empty words - builds up each to the other increasing hatred until one destroys the other. This is what Catholic versus Protestant, heretic versus orthodox always comes to - the triumph of a mutually supporting double spiral of hatred. If it were only so simple . . . . Adso after these discussions about heresy with other real people makes the terrible mistake of going into the library by himself. While he ascends the stairs he mulls over the memory of a heretic he saw burned in Florence who went to his fate in a state of ecstasy. Ecstasy is ecstasy. This is not as simple minded as it seems. He views a number of vividly illuminated manuscripts of the Apocalypse where - this is a fact - sacred figures are defined, symbolized by vicious animals - this is proper medieval manuscript tradition believe it or not. Adso becomes terrified. I think it is pointless to think of burning tapers with drugs in the wicks. His state of mind all by itself is enough to drive a normal man mad. He rushes down the stairs into the kitchen and discovers a girl, a WOMAN, with whom he experiences the same religious ecstasy as he thought he saw in the face of the heretic burned in Florence. Eco himself says in the POPSTSCRIPT that, not only is the SONG OF SONGS used extensively here, but numerous texts of other mystics. So heresy is not only an epiphany of hatred, it is an epiphany of love, of God, of woman, of everything - just as Ubertino said. One cannot tell the difference . . . Between what? . . . Between anything and everything. Burning in the fire of sex is confused with burning in the fire of the stake for the love of God as supposedly one sees it from ones particular, individual, special, unique, insignificant point of view. Talk about expansion and deflation . . . This is the context to a large extent behind the last conversation Adso and William have in the book - as the monastery literally dissolves into a chaos of fire, death, and damnation around the. Is communication at all possible? 2) It is easy to transform the discussion of differences and heretics into the broader interpretation of the use of language in categorizing groups, ideas and movements as the needs demand. Today we witness the same thing the abbot did - classifying by name and thus branding for the purposes of easily accomplished denigration. [intifada, jihad, liberal, Catholic, Christian, socialist, etc.] Names carry the weight of entrenched dogma and belief systems and today we see them used, as they have always been used as tools of deception and manipulation. 3) William uses the term *simple* to describe those who [at least originally] have a kind of pure awareness of justice, truth, fairness, etc. but are corrupted by movements who use them as fodder. I love what William said, quoting Bonaventure: *.the wise must enhance conceptual clarity with the truth implicit in the actions of the simple.* [I may be wrong here, but the concept of the *simple* sounds somewhat Rousseauian? ] 3bGCM] It also announces a terrifying divide between means and ends, that is, these are the means to accomplished the desired end - but in using those means one perverts the meaning of the end, that is, one destroys the purpose one wants to accomplish by the means of accomplishing it. 4) William tries to explain universal truth and universals [a constant theme in the book] within the context of an all-knowing God and has difficulty reconciling them. He says: *You understand, Adso, I must believe that my proposition works, because I learned it by experience; but to believe it I must assume there are universal laws. Yet I cannot speak of them, because the very concept that universal laws and an established order exist would imply that God is their prisoner, whereas God is something absolutely free, so that if He wanted, with a single act of His will He could make the world different.* IMO this conundrum lies at the heart of any or all religious belief - or should lie there. Adso sums up what he has heard with an insightful question: *And so, if I understand you correctly, you act, and you know why you act, but you don't know why you know that you know what you do?* [a statement that is the nub of all neurological research and all philosophy!] 4bGCM: That is also why the Franciscan philosophers - and the Dominican Meister Eckhart - and some say Aquinas himself - shied away from the logical proofs of Gods existence because those very proofs bound Him within logical laws! That is also why Neoplatonism was so congenial to religious belief - especially to polytheistic religious belief - which is one of the reasons Aristotle triumphed over Plato in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches! Mirrors reflecting reverse images of each other in a maze of mirrors - which was the structure of the polytheistic theology of the last Philosopher of Byzantine Greece, Georgios Gemistos Plethon. Ciaou, Gary RICHARD SANSOM: When you say: *.all we know, all, is accidents - even natural laws, even mathematics in all of its branches.* begs the epistemological question as to what *knowledge* IS. [I suppose it is also an ontological question in the fullest sense.] If knowledge is but the arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections and no two of us have identical arrangements of these physical and chemical elements, then all knowledge is only subjective, and no two persons *knowledge* can be identical.[this is even ignoring the quantum level of disagreements among our physical brains] What then of mathematical knowledge or belief, wherein it is a fact that two people can use the axioms of mathematics to solve the same problem and get identical answers? If, given the rules of geometry, two people can determine that all triangles have three angles whose sum is always 180 degrees, does this mean that, inherent in those axioms, there exists irrefutable conditions that inevitably lead to the same result by any human mind that can understand those conditions? Is there such a thing as the inherent or intuitive clarity of the idea of a perfect circle? Indeed, is there inherent or intuitive clarity in the idea of a perfect anything? There are those [such as Roger Penrose and Plato] who say yes - there is such a thing, that thing is the ontic reality of the 180 degree sum of angles and the perfect circle. Penrose would no doubt claim that without such SUBSTANTIAL truth in such things, mathematics would have no power and the results of its use [in building houses and airplanes, etc.] would always be questionable and quite u8npreditable. Thus, I can see why one might believe in fundamental truths in nature, without the necessary consensus of others. All this of course is pure Platonism, but aspects of it are not only quite comforting in our need to have stability and order, but also hard to refute on the surface. Think about the Pythagorean theorem: any REAL and COMPLETE proof requires that some very tough things must be dealt with: what is a straight line? What is a 90 angle? these are not trivial questions, yet they are assumed to be handled by our intuitive powers. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points; what is a point? In what geometric space is *distance* determined? Ask anyone to define a line, straight or not, and they will have much trouble and, if they are familiar with higher mathematics they will get into infinitesimals, etc and lose most of us. Could it be that the ease with which we accept these *truths* is related to our competence in the easy acceptance and acquisition of language? I think the point is: is there harm in believing in the intuitive assumptions about these kinds of things? If so, what is that harm? I have my opinions about this but I would like to hear others.. Another question arises related to such things as universal truths: we can safely ascribe to the utility if not the full veracity of mathematical *truths,* but, except for doctrinaire pronouncements from religion, which are all over the map, often in disagreement, there are no universally agreed to similar axioms for morality and human behavior. What does that leave us with? Are mathematical *truths* somehow very different from other kinds of *truth?* For me [for what its worth], as I have opined, probably ad nauseum, *knowledge* should be defined as only that which is immediately perceived by the senses; all else, included what is contained in memory, is belief. ANTONIO ROSSIN: 16.08.2007 (jumping into the discussion every now and then) I guess, how could you affirm that no two persons can have identical arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections (in what is also called "brain network") ? At least theoretically, such an identity is admissible. Indeed, the self-arrangement of one's brain network is no random. It obeys the natural rule of one's adaption to the environment outside. Therefore, if two persons live and arrange their brain networks inside one same environment, their brain networks will be quite predictably identical. Notice anyway that there are two environmental functions that may influence in this arrangement. One is Nature, i. e. the *pure* natural environment. The other is human society with its locally prevailing cultures and beliefs with the local authorities upholding them. Now, no two persons can observe the natural environment from the same angle of view, because no two bodies can occupy one same seat, but two persons can well obey one same social rule. Take for instance the social environment of countries where the local authorities are strongest, as in the religious fundamentalist countries. Don't you think of the persons who live there and have all arranged their brain networks under the identical local authorities, that they are all identical as regards the religious fundamentalist environment and its shared rules? Of course, also other "environments" can present shared rules as well, like the maths or geometry environments, which makes two brain networks become identical when applying (adapting) to them, as you noticed below as. ANTONIO ROSSIN: I guess, how could you affirm that no two persons can have identical arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections (in what is also called "brain network") ? RICHARD SANSOM: Aug 18, 2007 One method of affirmation has been shown as CAT scans of the brains of two people who are thinking or perceiving the same thing [as much as *same* can be assumed] shows that very different areas of the two brains are active - yet the thought and/or action involved is the *same* in both brains. IMO it would be absurd to believe that, with billions of neurons and trillions of possible synaptic connects identical connections would occur. ANTONIO ROSSIN: At least theoretically, such an identity is admissible. RICHARD SANSOM: I suppose that *theoretically* much is admissible, but empirical evidence shows contrary facts in the matter. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Indeed, the self-arrangement of one's brain network is no random. It obeys the natural rule of one's adaption to the environment outside. Therefore, if two persons live and arrange their brain networks inside one same environment, their brain networks will be quite predictably identical. RICHARD SANSOM: I believe the use of the concept of identicalness is as dangerous and problematic as the concept of perfection - indeed, identicalness is the perfection of agreement. IMO there is no such thing as perfection -- it is a transcendent concept only. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Notice anyway that there are two environmental functions that may influence in this arrangement. One is Nature, i. e. the *pure* natural environment. The other is human society with its locally prevailing cultures and beliefs with the local authorities upholding them. Now, no two persons can observe the natural environment from the same angle of view, because no two bodies can occupy one same seat, but two persons can well obey one same social rule. Take for instance the social environment of countries where the local authorities are strongest, as in the religious fundamentalist countries. Don't you think of the persons who live there and have all arranged their brain networks under the identical local authorities, that they are all identical as regards the religious fundamentalist environment and its shared rules? RICHARD SANSOM: Absolutely not! You admit that [aside from the fact that we are all different organisms] we all see the world from different perspectives, therefore our perceptions, which lead to the acceptance [or rejection] of social authority are bound to be different. Again, *identical* is wrong in this [or any] application. ANTONIO ROSSIN: . Of course, also other "environments" can present shared rules as well, like the maths or geometry environments, which makes two brain networks become identical when applying (adapting) to them, as you noticed below as. RICHARD SANSOM: *Identical* mathematical results does not necessarily imply identical cognitive means. The Pythagorean theorem can be proved many ways. Also, much in the acceptance of mathematical *truth* comes about through cognitive habit - not always through similar reasoning. ANTONIO ROSSIN: 18.08.2007 I guess, how could you affirm that no two persons can have identical arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections (in what is also called "brain network") ? RICHARD SANSOM: One method of affirmation has been shown as CAT scans of the brains of two people who are thinking or perceiving the same thing [as much as *same* can be assumed] shows that very different areas of the two brains are active - yet the thought and/or action involved is the *same* in both brains. IMO it would be absurd to believe that, with billions of neurons and trillions of possible synaptic connects identical connections would occur. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Agreed. Really, what I have in mind is the function, rather than the structure. At least theoretically, such an identity is admissible. RICHARD SANSOM: I suppose that *theoretically* much is admissible, but empirical evidence shows contrary facts in the matter. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Indeed, the self-arrangement of one's brain network is no random. It obeys the natural rule of one's adaption to the environment outside. Therefore, if two persons live and arrange their brain networks inside one same environment, their brain networks will be quite predictably identical. RICHARD SANSOM: I believe the use of the concept of identicalness is as dangerous and problematic as the concept of perfection - indeed, identicalness is the perfection of agreement. IMO there is no such thing as perfection -- it is a transcendent concept only. ANTONIO ROSSIN: I owe to agree again. Though I accept the concept of perfection as a goal to tend to. What is dangerous, IMO, is one's belief that oneself has reached that goal. Notice anyway that there are two environmental functions that may influence in this arrangement. One is Nature, i. e. the pure natural environment. The other is human society with its locally prevailing cultures and beliefs with the local authorities upholding them. Now, no two persons can observe the natural environment From the same angle of view, because no two bodies can occupy one same seat, but two persons can well obey one same social rule. Take for instance the social environment of countries where the local authorities are strongest, as in the religious fundamentalist countries. Don't you think of the persons who live there and have all arranged their brain networks under the identical local authorities, that they are all identical as regards the religious fundamentalist environment and its shared rules? RICHARD SANSOM: Absolutely not! You admit that [aside from the fact that we are all different organisms] we all see the world from different perspectives, therefore our perceptions, which lead to the acceptance [or rejection] of social authority are bound to be different. Again, identical is wrong in this [or any] application. ANTONIO ROSSIN: I think, I didn't even admit that. I admit that [aside from the fact that we are all different organisms] we all see the world from different perspectives, nevertheless there is an identical world which we are all bound to look at, mostly at our zero-to-three age when our perceptive ability is not so much selective as regards the particulars of the core structure of the social world. Which fact imprints the brain network in an identical way for all. Therefore our perceptions, which lead to the acceptance [or rejection] of social authority's imprinting, are bound to tend to the same identical goal. Again, "identical" as the *pretended* arrival is wrong in this [or any] application. Of course, also other "environments" can present shared rules as well, like the maths or geometry environments, which makes two brain networks become identical when applying (adapting) to them, as you noticed below as. RICHARD SANSOM: Identical mathematical results does not necessarily imply identical cognitive means. The Pythagorean theorem can be proved many ways. Also, much in the acceptance of mathematical truth comes about through cognitive habit - not always through similar reasoning. ANTONIO ROSSIN: This notwithstanding, mathematical results imply an identical world to look at. Therefore the mathematical truth tends to be identical for all, which should to some extent require, at least theoretically, identical reasoning by all the involved persons. GARY C. MOORE: Identity and difference. As the *novel* THE NAME OF THE ROSE, if *novel* it really is, proceeds - which, by the way only I have actually tried to start at the beginning of, though I complicated matters by going directly to the end - either *another* major theme arises OR *another* variation of whatever the major theme may in fact be and I have not even clearly identified yet - surely, Antonio, you have read this, one of the greatest, maybe THE greatest, Italian novels ever written? - is both Adsos and Williams growing concern and confusion as to exactly what Identity and Difference *are*, that is, in the abstract as opposed to the difficulties of practical identification of groups as *orthodox* or *heretical* which Eco demonstrates quickly degenerates into a ludicrous confusion one cannot even call evil because the whole difference between good and evil is flushed down the toilet by the process of trying to apply abstract labels to living human beings. This process is dramatically demonstrated at a highly emotional point by Adso, and becoming highly emotional also for William, at page 207-208 in I think the second *nones* chapter, where Adso in rational exasperation - like maybe some of the other participants of this dialogue - bursts out with: QUOTE And so, if I understand you correctly, you act, and you know why you act, but you don't know why you know that you know what you do?* I must say with pride that William gave me a look of admiration. *Perhaps that's it. In any case, this tells you why I feel so undertain of my truth, even if I believe in it.* *You are more mystical than Ubertino!* I said spitefully. *Perhaps. But you see, I work on things of nature. And in the investigation we are carrying out, I don't want to know who is good or who is wicked, but who was in the scriptorium last night, who took the eyeglasses, who left traces of a body dragging another body in the snow, and where Berengar is. These are facts. Afterward I'll try to connect them -- if it's possible, for it's difficult to say what effect is produced by what cause. An angel's intervention would suffice to change everything, so it isn't surprising that one thing cannot be proved to be the cause of another thing. Even if one must try, as I am doing.* *Yours is a difficult life,* I said. But I found Brunellus,* William cried, recalling the horse episode of two days before. *Then there is an order in the world!* I cried, triumphant. *Then there is a bit of order in this poor head of mine,* William answered. END QUOTE NONE of Williams statements are casual or trivial, none, but are statements of the fundamental nature of *real knowledge*. Examine the statements again. For instance, What is an angel? What does it mean? It means freedom - and this is a major nominalist theological position - is miraculous. Does this apply to *accident* also? If we knew absolutely everything - instead of making abstract judgments of probability from the context assumed as *usual* or *what is normally the case*, that is, *snap judgments* - about an accident, it no longer would be an accident would it? But when do you know something so absolutely IN FACT? This is where Williams pride in finding Brunellus comes in. He found some facts that accurately fit together for real, as physically confirmed. The situation is highly limited, not a major scientific breakthrough, so why is William so proud? BECAUSE HE IS SURE FOR ONCE! What does Adso immediately do? He makes a statement about the ontological nature of the universe. What does William respond? He LOCATES where the order really is and states its true importance. *LOCATES*. That is the key word. In the abstract discussion of *identical arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections (in what is also called "brain network") * nothing is accomplished simply because the observational situation is not described literally - that is very inconvenient, short hand knowledge is so much easier to manipulate - no real physical comparisons are really made. And if you do, How many? And what makes that number *enough*? Is that true and perfect knowledge or is that just slip shod approximation again? Is slip shod approximation all we really have that we call knowledge? No, because William found Brunellus. But, O!!! That is such a disappointment!!!!! You wanted to discover the nature of the universe and all you found was a horse!!!! Find the horse first then worry about the nature of the universe. I think Jud Evans' radical approach to pure physical science, entirely to my taste, is the only valid or possible approach to anything that might be considered *real knowledge*. This means a search for literality. Identity cannot be abstract. It has to be THIS identity. What does that mean? It would mean placed - or being validly place-able, positionable - in the physical world, a material situation, or - and this is initially only speculative - on a map, a diagram, a blueprint acknowledging a frame, a margin that marks, literally, the physical *end* of that concept as mapped. Scientific techniques of supposedly observing the brain at work do not take into account the observation of the observation and what is literally, on the spot, being observed - except by really good and thorough scientists who take every step literally. What is being physically observed? A picture in a frame mapping a process, for instance, the progress of a radioactive isotope injected into the blood stream of the purportedly observed subject. But you are not seeing what is literally happening in the brain, just what is happening on a television screen. So the subject of the procedure is actually at least one step back - and probably much, much more - from being directly observed. What you are doing is *guessing*. It is legitimate if you call it a hypothesis, describe your procedure, others replicate it within acceptable parameters, and then - you have a . . . . *good guess*. That is all you have, no more. Another scientist can come along, change slightly some of the parameters, and get wholly new results. Sometimes it shows both parties are correct according to the different parameters. Sometimes it shows one parties parameters were incorrect. RICHARD SANSOM: One method of affirmation has been shown as CAT scans of the brains of two people who are thinking or perceiving the same thing [as much as *same* can be assumed] shows that very different areas of the two brains are active - yet the thought and/or action involved is the *same* in both brains. IMO it would be absurd to believe that, with billions of neurons and trillions of possible synaptic connects identical connections would occur. At least theoretically, such an identity is admissible. GARY C. MOORE: Assumptions are guesses regardless of when or where used. Two people cannot physically perceive the same thing either because they cannot be in the same place at the same time or time has passed and both observer and observed are materially different. Thoughts cannot be physically observed. Actually, I think thoughts are theological concepts based on theological premises. I do not understand what you are saying is *absurd*. Is the sentence incomplete? Either way I read the penultimate and ultimate sentences, the one contradicts the other. Adso knows there is *a bit of order* in Williams head because he physically found Brunellus. But how do you find a thought? RICHARD SANSOM: I suppose that *theoretically* much is admissible, but empirical evidence shows contrary facts in the matter. Indeed, the self-arrangement of one's brain network is not random. GARY C. MOORE: I do not know about *theoretically much is admissible*. How does one self-arrange ones brain? The concept is intiging but far beyond me. That *ones brain network is not random* I have never seen any evidense of whatsoever. Indeed, some intentional processes work within approximate parameters, but most of the time one has to physically adjust as one goes along, adapting to the immediate situation as perceived as you go along. Randomness as in *fuzzy logic* for computers [or consider the true nature of *accidents*] is an extremely useful tool for living in and adapting to the physical world but only if the external physical world always has priority of value over everything else. And, as William explains about *good and wicked* that is a real problem. But always first and foremost you must know the facts which are always trivial by themselves. They have to be. Things are not words. RICHARD SANSOM: It obeys the natural rule of one's adaptation to the environment outside. Therefore, if two persons live and arrange their brain networks inside one same environment, their brain networks will be quite predictably identical. GARY C. MOORE I cannot accept this. It takes no account of randomness. Environment is always outside. There is no inside to environment. You cannot observe physically within your own body - just through machines, and all you observe there are machines. And they are most thoroughly *outside* of everything. RICHARD SANSOM: I believe the use of the concept of identicalness is as dangerous and problematic as the concept of perfection - indeed, identicalness is the perfection of agreement. GARY C. MOORE: And if you do not agree - and persist in obstinacy [this is very important for THE NAME OF THE ROSE - the difference between people who can adapt and who WILL NOT adapt] you will be burned at the stake. So - surprise - you in the end are not burned for heresy but for obstinacy. This is very important. This is the difference between the Catholic Magesterium and the Protestant *I know for sure what is right and wrong!* What you think inside your brain, your conscience, is your own business. What you speak to others is the Churchs business - OBJECTIVE MATERIAL OBSERVATION. But a Protestant wants to know what you FEEL. And what if you really do not know what you feel? You are in real trouble. RICHARD SANSOM: IMO there is no such thing as perfection -- it is a transcendent concept only. GARY C. MOORE: I agree whole heartedly. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Notice anyway that there are two environmental functions that may influence in this arrangement. One is Nature, i. e. the *pure* natural environment. The other is human society with its locally prevailing cultures and beliefs with the local authorities upholding them. Now, no two persons can observe the natural environment from the same angle of view, because no two bodies can occupy one same seat, but two persons can well obey one same social rule. Take for instance the social environment of countries where the local authorities are strongest, as in the religious fundamentalist countries. Don't you think of the persons who live there and have all arranged their brain networks under the identical local authorities, that they are all identical as regards the religious fundamentalist environment and its shared rules? RICHARD SANSOM: Absolutely not! You admit that [aside from the fact that we are all different organisms] we all see the world from different perspectives, therefore our perceptions, which lead to the acceptance [or rejection] of social authority are bound to be different. Again, *identical* is wrong in this [or any] application. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Of course, also other "environments" can present shared rules as well, like the maths or geometry environments, which makes two brain networks become identical when applying (adapting) to them, as you noticed below as. RICHARD SANSOM: *Identical* mathematical results does not necessarily imply identical cognitive means. The Pythagorean theorem can be proved many ways. Also, much in the acceptance of mathematical *truth* comes about through cognitive habit - not always through similar reasoning. GARY C. MOORE: Excellent Richard! You brought out numerous points I should have thought off. Sorry if I confused you with Antonio or vice versa. *Habit*, I keep forgetting, is an *ontological* fundamental in Aristotles thinking that I tend to loose track of. But we could do absolutely nothing without cognitive *habits*. They are not really the same as abstractions but are inclusive of *fuzzy logic*, approximation in action where we can drive down the street without getting killed. Probably other important things could be said about it. Ciaou, Gary ANTONIO ROSSIN: I guess, how could you affirm that no two persons can have identical arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections (in what is also called "brain network") ? At least theoretically, such an identity is admissible. Indeed, the self-arrangement of one's brain network is not random. It obeys the natural rule of one's adaptation to the environment outside. Therefore, if two persons live and arrange their brain networks inside one same environment, their brain networks will be quite predictably identical. Notice anyway that there are two environmental functions that may influence in this arrangement. One is Nature, i. e. the *pure* natural environment. The other is human society with its locally prevailing cultures and beliefs with the local authorities upholding them. Now, no two persons can observe the natural environment from the same angle of view, because no two bodies can occupy one same seat, but two persons can well obey one same social rule. Take for instance the social environment of countries where the local authorities are strongest, as in the religious fundamentalist countries. Don't you think of the persons who live there and have all arranged their brain networks under the identical local authorities, that they are all identical as regards the religious fundamentalist environment and its shared rules? Of course, also other "environments" can present shared rules as well, like mathematical or geometry environments, which makes two brain networks become identical when applying (adapting) to them, as you noticed below as. GARY C. MOORE: I just read part of a chapter of Michael Crichtons THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, chapter 20, *ROUTINE*. On two levels it defines - as far as I went - I do not know what the rest of the chapter says assuming it relates to the subject of scientific *routine* - what is wrong with these observations. It must be remembered that Crichton is a trained and experience practical, not theoretical, scientist. First, we are not doing the basic work. This is ontological. Science does not proceed by theoretical jumps of mental fantasies but by *diligent, sheer, grinding hard work . . . Most of this work was to lead to nowhere.* We use machines to do most of this now. We have forgotten the *basic work*, the hands on, the direct perceptual observation that was done before we had these machines. This is not an incidental blunder, this is an ontological faux pas. We are forgetting what the machines are actually doing and why we have to resort to using them - time, labor, expense and numerous other things. Crichton describes, for instance, the formidable process of thinking through what amino acids were, what they meant and implied, and how a final - abstract but workable - model - DNA - was evolved. We think of it as a simple thing, now, like the keyboard I am pounding on. It is not. It is an abstraction far away from direct perceptual observation, so far away there can still be fundamental secrets hidden in that search we have not come upon that may still totally surprise us out of the blue, completely unanticipated. In essence, using machine to manipulate machine to manage machines to deal with the incredibly small puts us completely out of touch - and it can be no other way - of the whole context of what is happening, that is, if we ever even find out. What we perceive is the only thing we know and we cannot perceive through machines. This is not a *whether we should or should not* situation. It is the nature of the beast. If we want to find out about DNA, this is the only way we can go about it. But it is not perception, it is not knowledge. We do not know how the brain works because we do not see the brain working. What we see are instruments, machine, chemicals we introduced doing things to the brain and making deductions from what we see without acknowledging that what is happening is occurring in a much wider context than what we are observing even through machines and, though we seem to be conducting a controlled experiment, under such conditions it is ontologically impossible. Second, we are not asking the right questions. This connects directly to what I just said. The *right question* covers *all* circumstances, examples, etcetera, all possibilities, all conjectures. The scientists in *Wildfire* try to come up with a positive definition of *life*. They throw out the definitions of ingestion, excretion, reproduction, and so on immediately because, in the interstellar context, that is merely local. *The group finally concluded that energy conversion was the hallmark of life. All living organisms in some way took in energy and converted it to another form of energy, and put it to use* Sound good? Wrong. Viruses do not fit already. So they are arbitrarily excluded for convenience sake. One scientist is given the taste of rebuttal of the definition within these already arbitrary parameters for the next day. He brings in *a swatch of black cloth, a watch, and a piece of granite, and said, Gentlemen, I give you three living things. Placing the cloth in sunlight converts radiant energy to heat. Objection - this is merely passive energy, not conversion nor purposeful. Reply - How do you know? The radium dial of the watch released energy as light. Objections about potential energy were raised but the point had been made about ambiguity. *Finally, they came to the granite.* Leavitt said, It is living breathing, walking and talking. Only we cannot see it because it is happening too slowly. Rock has a life span of two billion years. We have a life span of sixty or seventy years. We cannot see what is happening to this rock for the same reason we cannot make out the tune on a record being played at the rate of one revolution every century. And the rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it we are like flashes in the dark . . . They conceded that it was possible that they might not be able to analyze certain life forms. It was possible that they might not be able to make the slightest headway, the least beginning, in such an analysis.* There is no humility before the natural world as it really is - whatever that is. This same point is made again in JURASSIC PARK. ANTONIO ROSSIN: I strongly disagree, for two reasons. First, what you described is the empirical process of knowledge. Nice; but there is another process, called experimental process. We can imagine and simulate situations and trigger actions and reactions. We can observe what happens next and withdraw rules and models. This is called "try-and-err" process, which but we can conduct in a quite empirically correct manner. Second, in order to observe how the brain works, we can use communication, and empirically observe what predictable effects communication obtains - or fails to obtain, and why. Ok., Jurassic Park. I see scientists, and scientific research, spending lots of money to study a piece of bone they found inside some Jurassic stone. Suffice it to see some National Geografic documentaries on such archaeologies. All of them conclude with the same comment: "This research will help us understand better where we come from". Nice. All of them are empirically correct scientific researches. Yet IMO that is a waste of money. What we need of, it is the common acknowledgment of what we are doing now, how our thinking machine works, and works so badly, and what could the tentative changes be (perhaps via education). RICHARD SANSOM: *.This flag of crescent and star leads the way to progress and perfection.* Part of the Pakistani national anthem. I believe that the point Antonio brings up about *identical* brain states in conjunction with, say, the idea of a perfect circle, is an excellent example of the always lurking Platonism. The circle example is excellent: once a child learns what a circle *is* they will readily identify one, even one crudely drawn on the black board. They might say: That is a circle; or somewhat more sophisticated for a child: That is circular. Antonio sees this [if I assume correctly] as a concrete construction of *circle-ness* in the brain that must be seen as *identical.*among us all. Even if I am correct, that no two brain states could possibly be *identical,* there is the curious fact that indeed we all do recognize a certain shape that can be called a circle - even it is not a precise rendering of one. GARY C. MOORE: Well, we also are capable of understanding a statement such as *I am baking bread.* with more or less the same clarity of interpretation and understanding as when we identify a circle. But while the Platonist will assume that, because we all appear to be privy to the existence of *circularity* as an ontic reality [i. e. an ideal form] in the universe, few would ascribe baking bread to some transcendental reality. [Although perhaps a dyed-in-the-wool Platonist might!] Comprehending *circularity* is basically no different from comprehending the baking of bread as a thing or act we can think about and give voice to. Is there something intrinsically universal in a circle that allows us to recognize it in its many possible forms? IMO we learn what we call *circularity* in the same way we learn what a rock is, or what baking and bread are. It is all related to language and representation. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Regarding the comments on *perfection,* while one might claim that the equation C=pi x D [circumference = pi times the diameter of the circle] is a perfect representation of the length of a circle, given perfect knowledge of the diameter, and the perfect presentation of pi. we all know that there is no measurement of D that can be made with perfect precision, and there is no perfect presentation of pi since it is an unending irrational constant. Thus, the equation is an idealized proposition regarding an idealized possibility - nothing more. RICHARD SANSOM: Whence came the concept of perfection? Can we live without it? It is said that it is something to be strived for - both in the physical and the social world - that is, we must strive for reaching a conceptual, not a truly realiable state. The more accurate we make mirrors in telescopes, the more accurately they capture distant objects and one might opine that we are striving for the perfect mirror surface. But quantum physics informs us that there can be no such state of physical perfection, since at the sub-atomic level uncertainty reigns and a mirror surface must deal with photons by possessing a surface that is *perfect* at the level of photonic size AND deal with the fact that there is uncertainty at the level of photon contact. Heisenberg seems to have proven that *perfection* is permanently illusive. What we strive for is success dealing with a design objective. If the mirror eventually allows us to discriminate planets circling a distant star, and that was the design objective, then, as I discuss below - the objective was perfectly achieved. It is reasonable [and apparently quite human] to strive for making something better equipped to accomplish something we require, and much of science and medicine is devoted to that end. However it is not *perfection* that we seek, but simply improvement or success - that is the real goal. I offer a slightly different take on *perfection:* The two Mars landers have far exceeded their design life; I claim that in terms of their design objective, the mission success can be deemed to be perfect. If one wins at the game of chess, their success was perfect. If a golfers putt goes in the hole, it was a perfect putt; if ones car engine starts when they turn the key it is a perfect result. Etc. *Binary success* is, IMO, perfect. The other kind of perfection, which is purely a conceptual thing, is an idealistic myth. GARY C. MOORE: In general, I think both Ecos and Michael Crichtons turning to the novel form to disseminate their ideas may have to do with discouragement in teaching students or learning from professors. The classroom has become a poor means of presenting ideas. In fact, I think Jud Evans has - for instance in the comments I just read - found the best way to present straight material for learning from one person to another. He relies, though, on a reduction ad absurdum, an ability to show either a subject can or cannot be reduced to laughter. Satire is always near by in Juds thinking. Of course it comes easily to him because his prime criteria is, Does it work in real life like that or not? So Jud can pursue a discourse at length, yet pull up the reader abruptly by always coming back to literal specifics, that is, *this* and *that* whereas traditional teaching has a broad swathe to carve in a large number of students minds which inescapably means employing abstractions abundantly while hoping the logical rules of their use also being taught are harshly taken to heart - yet knowing the easy way of sliding through a subject with abstractions is all too appealing to a student trying to pass a course. In politics, they are called *buzz words*, that is, they trigger - if the student knows the teachers weakness - the desired response. But very little is actually learned through hard work, that is, working through each step and understanding why each step is unavoidably necessary. This is Crichtons point. Literally working through the steps of the history of science - for instance having to do by hand analyses that took weeks and months to do when, now, we pop it in a machine and get results in a couple of minutes at most - gives us a real picture of the result, a result constructed as much by the labor put into it as the object purportedly sitting there by itself, something that is lost when using the machine, that is, the physical *distance* or *effort* necessary to achieve a result which is now entirely done by machine, and by which we skip the steps still materially necessary to obtain that result but erased from our consciousness in the labor saving machine. This actually encourages a loss of knowledge of what is physically going on. And it is most evident in people using calculators of more and more sophistication in doing higher mathematics while they literally forget - or never even learned - the basic, down in the dirt ways of simple subtraction, addition, multiplication, and division. They simply do not understand any longer what they have conveniently bypassed with their calculators, and though they have access to dealing with numbers in highly abstract fashion getting fantastic results, no longer understand what the numbers were originally meant to refer to, that is, one orange, one apple. It is the quandary of knowing you can do it, but not wondering should you do it - which I misunderstood before as a moral question when in fact it is a question of methodological competency. People take it as a joke that math professors can do quadratic equations but cannot balance their checkbook - but the humor of that has now departed for me as I more and more see Crichtons point that knowing how to solve a specific problem that is highly complex while ignoring the general, wider context that problem is solved in might be extremely dangerous - and irrevocable. In reading Ecos novels, I see much the same thing from a very different point of view. What is presented as a sterilized abstraction academically can, when placed even in a invented but realistic world of real people acting with normal human motives, shows things that seem to be merely tic-tac-do games in academia can kill people in real life. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Coming back to the statement "There are no two identical brains", I would add that the brain scientists do usually scan the brain structure (nervous cells, synapses, chemicals etc.) in order to get hard empirical data. I agree, that from that point of view, no two brains are identical. A quite different point of view is searching for the function of the brain. Accordingly, if this function is the environmental adaption best practice, all brains are identical under the same given environmental circumstancies. Well now, if what we are dealing with now, were (a scheme of) understanding, let me recall the say of a medicine professor, Augusto Corsini: "In pathologic schemes the structure governs the function; in physiologic schemes the function governs the structure." RICHARD SANSOM: I suggest that the above quotes from professor Corsini are simplistic, in that the structure and function of the brain are not so easily labeled. The pathology of the brain [or of the body as a whole} is a conceptual construct - i. e. when something occurs that appears to alter homeostasis or cause disfuction it is called *a pathology.* The line between a pathology and *health* is often blurred by lack of knowledge of the physiology. Is a fever pathological since an excess can damage the brain? In fact, a fever is normal physiology and its evolved intention is to deal with intruding antigens. An over-active immune system that causes an allergic reaction can be seen as a pathology OR as the correct response of the body - i. e. correct in the sense that it is doing what it is genetically predisposed to do. We may not like what is going on, but in this case, the body is functioning like it supposed to. Many of the great aurguments of medicen center around that *supposed to do.* ANTONIO ROSSIN: Agreed, as in a conceptual perspective. But what about, as in a practical perspective? Here, two points should be made clearer, IMO. First, the author of that simple sentence is an experienced surgeon who daily cuts and stitches bodies several times a day and saves human lifes. Mine too, btw, a six years ago. Therefore "pathology" - under some circumstancies - becomes a practical construct that implies action, something more than a conceptual construct which implies knowledge only. This makes me remember the old cartoon with some physicians around the bed of a sick person and the caption: "While physicians discuss, the sick person dies". Hence some questions arise: what is the relationship between conceptual and practical framework? Or shall the theoretical and the practical frameworks be kept as separate entities? I think they should not, at least there is a statement that binds the two entities strictly together. It is, maybe from Huxley: "Theory without practice is sterile - practice without theory is blind." Second, the concept of the pathologic condition called "sickness" should be better defined. When are we correct, in defining one's condition "a sickness"? What is it the correct definition of sickness? Trying to answer myself, I think that two elements are embedded in the definition of sickness: the interested person's consciousness, and the sick person / physician relationship. RICHARD SANSOM: [A great example of what I am talking about is the following: Polio, prior to the development of the Salk and other vaccines, tended to be more prevalent in higher socio-economic communities/families. The reason is fascinating. Very young children, age zero to five or so, have a strong immune system. The polio virus can be carried in dirt and feces and the very young of poor families tend to be less careful about hygine, thus their children were more likely to get the virus, have little or no symptoms and develop a life-long immunity to polio. The parents who were more hygienic prevented their young children from getting the virus and thus, when they became adults were much more susceptible to the disease. This is a case of a *pathology* [i. e. getting polio very early] doing something good for the health of the organism.] ANTONIO ROSSIN: How true. Really, one's immuno-system, to become efficient, needs of some contacts with the antigenes such as Polio. Do you remember of the aborigines in the Brasilian rain forests, who died from a simplest cold because they did not even know that infection in advance? RICHARD SANSOM: Regarding the comments on *perfection,* while one might claim that the equation C=pi x D [circumference = pi times the diameter of the circle] is a perfect representation of the length of a circle, given perfect knowledge of the diameter, and the perfect presentation of pi. we all know that there is no measurement of D that can be made with perfect precision, and there is no perfect presentation of pi since it is an unending irrational constant. Thus, the equation is an idealized proposition regarding an idealized possibility - nothing more. RICHARD SANSOM: Whence came the concept of perfection? Can we live without it? It is said that it is something to be strived for - both in the physical and the social world - that is, we must strive for reaching a conceptual, not a truly realiable state. The more accurate we make mirrors in telescopes, the more accurately they capture distant objects and one might opine that we are striving for the perfect mirror surface. But quantum physics informs us that there can be no such state of physical perfection, since at the sub-atomic level uncertainty reigns and a mirror surface must deal with photons by possessing a surface that is *perfect* at the level of photonic size AND deal with the fact that there is uncertainty at the level of photon contact. Heisenberg seems to have proven that *perfection* is permanently illusive. What we strive for is success dealing with a design objective. If the mirror eventually allows us to discriminate planets circling a distant star, and that was the design objective, then, as I discuss below - the objective was perfectly achieved. ANTONIO ROSSIN: What you call it "design objective", I would call it "function". Well, my opinion is, all brains are identical inasmuch ALL have the the identical "system", or "understanding model", or even better, "synthesizing model", to accomplish every function with adaptive aims. And "perfection" is a goal of this four components model. The four components are To Give; To Have Positive (equality, thesis) Negative (difference, antithesis) and are linked together in a cross structure. RICHARD SANSOM: Antonio, IMO, there is a difference: a *design objective* [in things man-made] is what is wished for; a function is what happens in the process that was designed. As for our brains, while there is no *design objective* or teleology at work in the making of the brain, there is only utility of the brain. ANTONIO ROSSIN: This point requires further deepening, IMO, according with the concept of genetics (instead of "teleology"). Anyway: (RICHARD SANSOM continues) Given some design objective, such as building a house or computer, surely you will agree that no two persons will go about the actual design/construction in the same way - i. e. their cognitive processes are bound to be different, and in some cases quite different. As for all brains having identical *understanding model,* I cannot agree here either. If you take economics, for example, even given several hundred years of experience with the virtues and defects of supply- and demand-side economics, there is scant real agreement as to the most effective, equitable and stable economic system. People come at issues from very different perspectives that often result in very different approaches [i. e. design objectives] I am not certain that I understand your four components in the context of this discussion: please explain a bit more. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Let's imagine a newborn individual who comes into the world, i. e. into a given environment, and must learn how to relate - adapt herself in - to it. I question: did she come into the world as a "tabula rasa"? Or had she some cognitive tools in order to give her sensorial perceptions a logical meaning? I think she has some basic cognitive tools, indeed, the four components I mentioned above. That are, in due order: 1. Recognition: what is "equal", i. e. positive, to what. 2. Confrontation: what is "contrary", i. e. negative, to the equals. 3. Receiving things or values: the "to Have" (down) polarity. 4. Giving things-values to other people: the "to Give" (upper) polarity. Notice that these four components are functions of the cognitive process. But, if we wanted to draw out the logical structure of the cognitive process, we will have a cross-like structure with an horizontal axis at whose ends we conveniently put the 1. equal- positive and the 2. contrary-negative components, and a vertical axis at whose "down" end we conveniently put the 3. "To Have" polarity and at whose "upper" polarity we conveniently put the "to Give" polarity. Well now, in my opinion, any one's cognitive process should have all of these four components in good balance, in order to reach a good adaption level with the environment one lives in. But this is not the common rule for all. For instance, acccording with this theory, as regards the horizontal axis of the cross, the religious fundamentalist is in a lack of the 2. component. To them, no confrontation is admissible. The contrary-negative is the evil, to be possibly killed out. Also, as regards the vertical axis, the kid is (almost) in a lack of the 4. "to Give" polarity - which is vice versa well represented in the adult persons, parents. Accordingly, one's ripening from child to adult person goes along with reaching a better balance between the "to Have" and the "to Give" components of one's cognitive process for its outcomes. As for the pertinence of all of this to the context of this ongoing discussion, I suggest that the acknowledgment of these four components theory can give us some more explanations about how the brain works, don't you agree? ANTONIO ROSSIN: I have little doubt, that these components are somehow coded inside the human DNA - yet please, dear brain scientist, do not scan the DNA structure in search for them ;-))) -- and that the human is striving for "perfection", meant as the best adaptive practice, because the more this "perfection" function gets accomplished, the utmost survival is granted. RICHARD SANSOM: The connection of the striving for perfection as it relates to survival is an interesting thought. However, there are some problems with it. As I mentioned in my post, I see human activity mainly concerned not with aiming for perfection, but more for incremental success of immediate objectives. What is the perfect boat? Could the first makers of carved out logs have envisioned the perfect boat? Is there, or could there be such a thing? Is there such thing as the perfect human organism? Can anyone possibly envision such a creature? Would any r esearcher in their right mind strive to develop such an organism? Certainly not! They would concentrate on the problems at hand, dealing with disease, increasing longevity, providing sufficient energy, and so on. Only the most far-sighted among us look ahead a few hundred years at the health of the planet and us humans, and even then, it is not seeking perfection. ANTONIO ROSSIN: This is right from an academic, theoretical only point of view. But, what about a more practical point of view, say, that of a parent? Let me paraphrase your above points accordingly: "We the parents in the streets see human activity mainly concerned with aiming for the utmost perfection for our children as our immediate objective whose success we want to increment. What is the perfect child? Could we the first makers of children have envisioned the perfect one? Is there such thing as the perfect human organism? Is there, or could there be such a thing? Can anyone possibly envision such a creature? Of course we can, though not in the Absolute, but in a fair relation to our wishes and possibilities. Would any parent in their right mind strive to develop such an organism? Certainly YES! We should concentrate on the problems at hand, dealing with disease, increasing longevity, providing sufficient energy, and so on, for our offspring. The most far-sighted among us is not in need of looking ahead a few hundred years at the health of the planet and the humankind, to accomplish our daily seeking "perfection" for our children..." Of course, there is a gap, between the language of the academe (let's agree for convenience that it is yours) and the language of PITS (let's agree for the same convenience that it is mine). On this very point, I would like you to take a read at: http://evans- experialism. freewebspace. com/miller02. htm RICHARD SANSOM: Consider the perceived survival needs of some of the native tribes in South America. They are decimating the rain forests in order to make money for food and TV dishes; also they assume they are improving their survival and in terms of improved medical services, they might be - for their short-term survival. This has little or nothing to do with species survival. In fact, destroying the rain forests is a very bad thing for the planet and for us. Not only do the forests produce oxygen, they undoubtedly contain a myriad of potentially valuable chemicals for use in curing disease. The most effective chemicals for treatment of disease have all come from natural sources. The shark and the cockroach have survived pretty much intact, morphologically, for 60 million years or so. Is theirs an example of what you call the *utmost survival?* For us humans, evolutionary stasis is not the way we think about survival. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Let's make the distinction here between "relative" (according to their personal cognitive mindframe) survival and "absolute" (according to the "perfection goal" of humankind) survival ;-) I guess, if one's survival is one's utmost degree of adaptation to the environment one lives in, then the confrontation betwen shark and humans is inadmissible, because sharks live in a (almost) static environment - the sea water - there were humans live in a more complex environment that changes more and more quickly RICHARD SANSOM: It is reasonable [and apparently quite human] to strive for making something better equipped to accomplish something we require, and much of science and medicine is devoted to that end. However it is not *perfection* that we seek, but simply improvement or success - that is the real goal. I offer a slightly different take on *perfection:* The two Mars landers have far exceeded their design life; I claim that in terms of their design objective, the mission success can be deemed to be perfect. If one wins at the game of chess, their success was perfect. If a golfers putt goes in the hole, it was a perfect putt; if ones car engine starts when they turn the key it is a perfect result. Etc. *Binary success* is, IMO, perfect. The other kind of perfection, which is purely a conceptual thing, is an idealistic myth. ANTONIO ROSSIN: Agreed. I add, "perfection" is allowed by the best balance: - between the positive and the negative components as the pole ends of the horizontal, "tactical" axis of the cross structure; - between the to Give and the to Have components as the pole ends of the vertical, "strategical" axis of the cross structure; and - by one's own aware understanding - which means control - of one's own position in the balance between tactics and strategy in the above cross structure. RICHARD SANSOM: You will have to explain more about your use of *give* and *have.* ANTONIO ROSSIN: Let's hope, I did it well enough in the above. Let's suppose, UE understood very well about this explanatory model theory, as he wrote (on 1975!): "The Author starts from an analysis of cases in which the practice of language conceals and confuses, instead of expressing in its pretended linearity, the individual's psychical life, nevertheless in doing so it reveals the inner contradictions. These contradictions have a number of causes that have to be searched in the same structure of the family relationship.' RICHARD SANSOM: Antonio, I am somewhat lost as to the relevance of the above to our discussion on *perfection.* I am not equipped to discuss either psychology or psychiatry, which are obviously involved in this. However, I will comment on the statement that *language conceals and confuses.* Yes, it most definitely does that. For several years I have been quite interested in progress - what it is, how it comes about cognitively, etc. I am working on a paper that lays out these questions and the idea of *perfection* plays a rather small part. When completed I will post it. Let's keep in touch, ANTONIO ROSSIN: Richard, it seems to me, you are well equipped to discuss everything (psychology and psychiatry eventually encompassed) in a very good logics. GARY C. MOORE: In the *First Thought* I wanted to delineate the stages of human efforts to understand the world VERY SIMPLISTICALLY. I can see, now, what is happening here is an ongoing change in the paradigm of *reality*. I want to relate it to the psychology of how human beings actually think in the world of everyday life, *everyday life* being that for every individual in which they necessarily are forced to fit all their actions including all their thoughts however purportedly specialized in a theoretical fashion and deliberately intended to be separated from everyday concerns and motivations. I think Jud would agree this can never be done realistically at any level or situation, that the purportedly most abstract scientific theory or experiment can never be divorced from the everyday reality around it but merely segregated to an extent by acknowledging and trying to define approximate boundaries where one starts and the other stops but that there never is an absolute divorce and that at some point in time, no matter how theoretical the endeavor, its place within the everyday world of concerns, motives, and average abstract thinking has to be taken account of. If nothing else, when the bills have to be paid. At first, all you have to do is tell a story quite simply. One does not even need to really fit it into a context of other stories although the epic poets saw a monetary advantage to doing so [*monetary* in a very broad sense]. Then teachers saw the advantage of exposing explanations of the world in abstract terms based on material experience, like water, where universal explanations could be derived from things one could see and touch and that were experiences everyone thought they shared, thereby having a *realistic* sense of the world divorced from ridiculous stories of heros and gods. However, Aristotle comes along and shows that this also is ludicrous by showing specific objects in the world, for instance, how certain animals actually behave instead of making *realistic* generalized assumptions about animals based on stories again. Then comes the invention of theoretical science. It is definitely supported by mathematics when mathematics for the Greeks was a matter of intellectual labor where everyone had to work themselves through all the stages of learning as demonstrated in the story of Euclids reply to Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus when he asked for a short version of understanding geometry and Euclid says, *There is no royal road to geometry*. Now Philoponus, a Christian commentator on Aristotle, makes the distinct point that to understand movement or the passage of time at all one must have a specific starting point A and a specific ending point B. Which seems plain enough until he says, then, Aristotle was wrong in positing a universe without beginning or end since time and movement must have a starting point and an ending point to be simply comprehensible at all. And he had a point. Aristotles point is logically incomprehensible. Philoponus has a great advantage over him on that point. We may come up with a number of explanations to make Aristotles point seem like common sense or that Philoponus point contains contradictions of its own, and it does, but, point blank, Philoponus point by itself makes clear sense and Aristotles does not. Galileo - certainly not a supporter of the Christian establishment - picked up on this at the University of Padua and it helped him develop a physics based on strict experimental limitations. In *this* specific situation, if you do precisely *this*, you will get exactly *that* result. Instead of metaphysical deductions, Galileo made clearly defined situations of induction the same kind of support for theoretical deduction as mathematics already was, but instead of appealing to *this formula*, he appealed to *this material object*. Now, one immediate difference between mathematical formulae and theory based on inductive experiment is that mathematics is purportedly not only universal but eternal whereas theory based on induction is wholly dependent on repeatable experiment which is always at one time and one place and is physically observable in all its functions which mathematics is only in part. Philoponus probably would not have liked this application of his thought. Then, with the invention of observational machines like electron microscopes, crystallography, and spectrometers and so forth we have information that is either not obtainable at all by any other means or which saves tremendous amounts of time, labor, and money. This is undoubtedly a good thing except that, for the common scientist, they forget the real limitations of the medium they are using or never even really learned what they are or never experienced the labor of working through the old timey way of analyzing amino acids like an Alexandrian student of Euclid would have to work through THE ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRY page by page. In other words, unless he is the exception, he does not know how the machine gets its results, he just trusts them as long as they remain within expected parameters - and if not runs them again, tests the machine, and maybe calls in a repairman. In material fact, then, he really does not know how he gets his results - just that they do or do not fit his expectations in which he has a religious faith reflects reality. Now someone like Thomas Kuhn or Albert Einstein have devoted their lives to pointing out the utter inanity of approaching science in this fashion, but it is the average way the average scientist approaches science. This all relates to the psychology of thinking. It always fits within ones individual history. For instance, Fredric Copleston SJ. When a adolescent, I always found his books on the history of philosophy - in popular paperback form - in the book racks in the front of every Catholic Church along with the works of Thomas Aquinas. This engaged in my mind a certain disrespect since these things were treated as something for popular consumption. Now I understand it as reflecting more the mind of the theologically trained clerical establishment rather than any realistic expectation of public demand - because there was none. It was something they hoped for rather than any real anticipation of the popularity of Aquinas and the history of Catholic philosophy. Now, in trying to re-attain a background to the development of Aristotle and scientific method in Medieval Catholic philosophy - neither Orthodoxy nor Protestantism ever did this - I have discovered this man is extremely perceptive and, what is more, excruciatingly fair in analyzing philosophers I would have thought he would be antagonistic towards. I was completely unjustified in my prejudice toward someone I had never read really seriously for himself before. And the only reason I resorted to him now was that he is the only accessible source I have for John Duns Scotus. So this is a lesson in intellectual prejudice. If you have not really, literally read what a man himself has to say, do not make judgments of him based on rumors, presuppositions, and the popular media. Now, the reason John Duns Scotus is important to me is that he stands midway, both temporally and intellectually between Aquinas and Ockham, between *modified realism* and *nominalism*. Learning from Eco not to read Aquinas as if he were anticipating objections to his thought from the Enlightenment and the Age of Science but rather, in common sense, confronting at-hand problems wholly of his own age and place without any anticipation of readers in the distant future, you can see him as trying to bring philosophy out of the mysticism of Neoplatonism into the real world of real people dealing with the only thing they really know and all they can know - material objects. Eco is the first scholar that has ever made this clear to me. This should automatically raise a red flag that what Aquinas regards as *supernatural* and what we regard as *supernatural, though still the same thing, are being approached from an extremely different point of view from our own. Eco points out, unfortunately rather subtly, a number of real problems to such an approach to philosophy - but if you read THE NAME OF THE ROSE you can understand the political and economic pressures already evident in Aquinas time of having to put theology on some sort of realistic - in our sense of the term - basis. Now Scotus, known as *Doctor Subtilis*, picks up on a number of these problems. Essentially it boilds down to, If you accept this premise, then logically you must contend with this conclusion which creates a problem for the intention of your premise. For instance, Aquinas, holding reason as the ultimate form of knowledge, and holding reason as totally accessible to the human mind, and that this reason is based on observation of material objects and creating abstractions from them, how can this human finite mind possibly understand what happens after death when purportedly the soul contemplates God directly, an object completely outside the bounds of human reason as even Aquinas said? There are possible explanations, for instance we possess a faculty we know nothing about in this material life, but this is pure speculation. There are a number of like problems Scotus brings up that are especially related to how abstraction actually works since, though not in the manner of Ockham it seems, there are conundrums between the material world and the theological world and the theological world always has to be abstract - which gives us a hint that maybe abstraction always leads back to theological thinking in some way. Ciaou, Gary JUD EVANS: I just want to say how much I am enjoying Richard's and Antonio's exchanges - and your own of course Gary. One would need to go a long way to find erudition like this dropping through one's mail-box. I see the cognitive contradictions that Richard and Antonio are identifying and discussing, and in particular the INNER *SOLILOQUY VERSION* of the dialectic which Antonio had developed, as the brain's attempt to reconcile, moderate, come to terms with, or make the new [incoming] sensory information *fit in* and be *perceptually accommodated* with the antecedal or existing psycho-physical regularities which have been established since childhood. For, me these old *laid down* layers of the reification of abstraction can be thought of as the *established theory,* and the fresh, incoming data which arrives via the sensorium [ through observation, conversation, reading etc.] can be labeled: * the anti-theory.* But the so-called *synthesis,* which results from that conflictual mentation, is not the oversimplified Hegelian/Marxist version that we have become to accept. In other words it is ONLY FOR SOME PEOPLE [a profoundly religious person for example] that the synthetic reconciliation results in an INTERTHEORETIC recasting or reformulation - and such a recasting and reformulation is just cloned version of the old. For them fresh information is ALWAYS reconcilable with the old in one way or another. For them incoming antithetical information is ALWAYS eliminated from any synthesis and in fact THEORY AND SYNTHESIS ARE SYNONYMOUS. In some OTHER PEOPLE there is an outright rejection of any: *cognitive compromise* or accommodation, and a new, ANTITHEORETIC psycho-physical model is substituted in place of the old (though admittedly the new model still continues to be influenced by interpretational echoes of the old.) Like you guys, my primary interest is in the philosophical ramifications of reification and instantiation of abstract concepts into quasi-entities, by treating them semantically and syntactically in some degree as if they were objects, when in reality they are fundamentally separated from embodiment, is detrimental to the rational investigation of the truths and principles of human experience, knowledge, or conduct. But I am also fascinated by the notion that the reification of abstraction has a biological basis in which cognitive and communicative word meanings and sentential structures are grounded in a pragmatic physical dynamic which is associated with aspects of the human, species-specific process of natural selection. Although the dissertation which I am writing just now is obviously directed at the philosophical community, the problem, as I see it, is widespread and is not restricted to that domain - it is simply more visible or high profile because of philosophy's rightful preoccupation with ontology, and the careful evaluation of words and meaning. One of the conclusions I have arrived at - and reading you three guys' texts have helped convince me in more in this matter, is that for many people exposure to persistent reification is a key feature of habituation. To become accustomed to repeated reificationary instantiation of the irreal, is to internalise the insubstantial and the imaginary and diminish new paradigm development and the production of innovative action-strategies which play a vital role in the struggle for dominance and the accumulation of individual success and failure in the process of natural selection. I am not BTW talking about some *airy-fairy* domain of academia or meta-philosophical discourse, but in regard to our own personal lives NOW - RIGHT NOW. I believe that de-reificatory action patterns like the ones that appear to be unfolding on this list - which Gary identifies above as: * an ongoing change in the paradigm of *reality,* represent to a high degree the successful overcoming of interiorised reificatory behaviour-traits, or psycho-physical regularities, which are stored in what is termed the "connectivity matrix" of our networks. It is these de-reified innovative action-patterns which stimulate the paradigm-shifts which effect our PRESENT view of the world as we sit at our computers, and have hitherto facilitated mankind's ascendency over other life forms since God knows when. I see de-reification as a positive feature in the determination of the individual's success or failure in the competitive domain of ideas and action It is rather like receiving a cognitive enema and flushing out all the old abstractive crap. Reification is identified as having seriously prejudicial, socially retrogressive effects with inherent negative implications for scientific, societal, political and religious stability and personally I want no part of it, but cannot escape from its coils, other than retreat into my own private world and keep as far away from tall buildings as possible.. RICHARD SANSOM: In reading Garys post I see him laying out a problem that I have pondered for a long time: Is there any real difference in the way we approach problems in life - be they technical, scientific, philosophical, practical or religious, etc? I say in the most fundamental way there is scant difference, if any. I believe there are only really two kinds of problems we deal with: physical problems and knowledge or abstract problems. But even in the case of knowledge problems, there is an ancient connection with the physical. In Aristotles famous introduction to his *Metaphysics,* he says: *All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses, for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves, and above all others the sense of sight.* [The most irritating but most profoundly important question the five year old can ask is: WHY? i. e. evidence of the instinctual urge to know what is behind something] I agree with Aristotle, with some caveats that he might have found curious. First, all men by nature desire to live, to exist, to survive, and in that urge toward survival, that all organisms seem to possess, they are bound to face problems dealing with survival and to solve those problems, they must know things. Early man mainly dealt with what I call physical problems; obtaining food, constructing shelter. building weapons and tools, defending himself and his tribe, and it was only later, perhaps during the so-called axial age, did man begin to deal with knowledge/abstract problems. But those problems grew out of the physical ones. The Egyptians, in the need for demarcating land for planting, devised certain geometric tools that eventually grew into abstract ones. The need for counting and accounting eventually grew into an interest purely in the way numbers seemed to behave. [Pythagoras]. The use of the lever, no doubt a very ancient devise, was eventually seen as a mathematical construct, apart from its physical utility - and so on. I believe that there is no knowledge or abstract problem, however obscure or arcane, that cannot be traced to some physical analog, if one has the patience to dig deep enough. In Garys last sentence he says: *.. there are conundrums between the material world and the theological world and the theological world always has to be abstract - which gives us a hint that maybe abstractions always leads back to theological thinking in some way.* I like to go back further - to pre-religious thinking. Religious thinking grew out of the perception of causality in the world or the universe. All phenomena was seen to have a cause, even though that cause was unseen and mysterious, thus deities were invented to supply the cause. As for abstract thinking being traceable to theological thinking, could it have been the other way around? An abstraction has no material representation. The unseen and unknowable causes of natural events [earthquakes, flooding, disease, etc.] were pure abstractions and eventually led to religious systems. I believe that men like Bacon, Scotus and Ockham, especially the latter, constructed a very distant God who had little or nothing to do with arranging and managing the natural world, thus starting the intellectual revolution around what is and what is not an act of God and how close man can be in understanding the world they inhabit - if they but choose to cast off religious dogma. [especially the kind practiced by Pope John XXII and his adherents.] and open their eyes and minds. I think Ockham was probably the first deist! Benetto Gaetani,[1] later Pope Boniface VIII, said, speaking of the teachers in Paris: * Rather than revoke this privelidge [of Medicants to hear confessions] the Roman Curia will destroy the University of Paris. We are called by God not to acquire wisdom or dazzle mankind, but to save our souls.* This kind of language and thinking must have driven the likes of Ockam, and the Spirituals in general, up the wall. The power of the Catholic church must not be challenged by suggesting that wisdom and knowledge of the world might be a better path to God than the iron clad dogma of the Church. Believing that God creates and manages everything, moment to moment, removes from one the need to investigate and understand the world - God, or more to the point, the Pope will take care of everything. [1] The above quote by Gaetani came from Friedrich Heers *The Medieval World,* a most excellent survey of the Western world, 1100-1350. I highly recommend it! ANTONIO ROSSIN: In reading Garys post I see him laying out a problem that I have pondered for a long time: Is there any real difference in the way we approach problems in life - be they technical, scientific, philosophical, practical or religious, etc? I say in the most fundamental way there is scant difference, if any. I believe there are only really two kinds of problems we deal with: 1] physical problems and 2} knowledge or abstract problems. But even in the case of knowledge problems, there is an ancient connection with the physical. In Aristotles famous introduction to his *Metaphysics,* he says: All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses, for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves, and above all others the sense of sight. [The most irritating but most profoundly important question the five year old can ask is: WHY? i. e. evidence of the instinctual urge to know what is behind something] I agree with Aristotle, with some caveats that he might have found curious. First, all men by nature desire to live, to exist, to survive, and in that urge toward survival, that all organisms seem to possess, they are bound to face problems dealing with survival and to solve those problems, they must know things. (Antonio, jumping in every now and then): To the old tiresome I am -- but curious like a five years old boy -- Aristotle's "by nature" is too much simplistic an explanation of the WHY. Even worse, I dare say, it looks like "reification". Let me explain. IMHO, it is common evidence what Richard notes, that all standard humans are doomed by nature to exist and survive. But I guess, there is big difference in the way we approach problems in life - be they technical, scientific, philosophical, practical or religious -- according with the urge for survival which each one of us has been accustomed to deal with since birth. The more significant age is the zero-to-three, scientists said. There are two approaching ways to existing things, as far as I can see. Both imply the use of our senses. But one way, or rather one WHY, is the delight we take in our senses themselves, as Aristotle said, and in the knowledge and experience of things which Nature is made with. The second way or WHY, is the necessity to parallel the meanings that we attribute to things, and to other daily circumstances, to the meanings which the social authority in office attributes to the same things and circumstances. Indeed many of us -- perhaps the very half of humankind who live in the so-called religious fundamentalist countries where the power of the authority in office is terrificly high and awful -- become accustomed since birth to seek for the authority's consent about the meanings we attribute to the existing things and circumstances, because this consent is fundamental for our survival. Well, Jud, to stick to the point: I do not know the exact meaning of the circumstance "reification", because I haven't got still any authority in office telling me what the authorized meaning of that word has to be :-P but I firmly suspect that that special circumstance, say, the reification of a meaning, occurs when the interested person seeks for the authority's consent on that meaning, and finds it straight. (more on the difference between these two ways, or WHYs, at: /rossin08. htm antonio, as usual CONTINUE TO SECTION TWO BACK TO TOP OF PAGE

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