MR. HYDE:

The nominalist says; Look, I am a *word-man* just like you are. English is my language as much as yours. Although I use the abstract shortcuts that you use and find them to be as convenient and labour-saving as you do - we differ, in that I only use them instrumentally [as crude tools] and I do not believe that what they address actually exists - whereas you do. I believe that it is extremely dangerous, particularly in a nuclear age where there is talk in today's press that three Islamic states are trying to develop atomic weapons

Can one be a *pure nominalist* and use language thusly, honestly. and yet in continual contempt of the verity of a certain class of words that are profoundly useful in the utility of speech and action?

DR. JEKYLL: The currency of most or close to all communication, is in words [ignoring *body language] and the substance of that communication is conveyed in words - be they abstract or concrete, particular or general, specific or universal, etc. Can one be a *pure nominalist* and use language thusly, honestly. and yet in continual contempt of the verity of a certain class of words that are profoundly useful in the utility of speech and action?

MR. HYDE: Thanks for going to such great lengths in commenting upon my position and raising such important points. As is my habit I read through your whole text, rather than doing as some people do - stopping at certain points - responding and then carrying on that way.

Because I read through it *all in one go* and because it was so well written, your overall view became apparent and with it the realisation that we are in fact coming to these questions of abstractions from entirely different angles - or perhaps, putting it another way - our communicational and semantic concerns have different priorities.

My main pursuits and concerns lie not with the communicational substance of that normally conveyed in the words of natural language nor particularly in the efficacy or weaknesses of such language, nor whether or not those words or combinations of words satisfactorily convey one's meaning, or couch what is to be conveyed in aesthetically pleasing or sufficiently detailed forms. My prime concern is with the ontological substance of what that communication conveys how the abstractional elements in human communication work to effect change in ourselves, in others, and in society, and how one may analyse this communication.

Nor is my immediate concern to be found in the historical and cultural context in which human communication takes place, or in the communicational easiness or difficulty or grammaticality, literary, dialectical, easiness or successful or unsuccessful description of situations or objects.

My researches have only one very simple and strictly demarcated objective - to ascertain and divide up into two distinct categories:

CATEGORY (a) That which [or the nominata of those words which point to *that which*] actually exists in the world. Humans, cats, motor cars, trees, bottles, molecules, the sun, energy, light waves, biological matter etc.

CATEGORY (b) Words which form part of what constitutes merely human verbal description and or comment about what exists, which do not point to any representative of that which exists, but are symbols that suggest or describe the way in which that which exists exists, and have themselves been posited as, and have become assumed and largely accepted to be objects like those in CATEGORY (a) and have been subsequently transferred to CATEGORY (a) and thereon employed in most religious and secular dialogue as if they were natural members of CATEGORY (a)

Therefore this attitude of mine only applies to how communication works to effect change in ourselves, in others, and in society and how one may analyse this communication, nor does it concern the historical and cultural context in which human communication takes place. My terminological strictures and nominalistic preoccupations only operate while I am engaged in this work - and not when I am engaged in normal communication, or when I am enjoying reading good literature or good poetry.

Think of my dividing up: *work and play* rather as a doctor or a surgeon does. When the surgeon is making love to his partner, he ceases to envisage the coils of bloodied intestines containing half-digested food and faecal matter nestling beneath the smooth skin of her belly as he rests his head upon her body, he probably does not think about these less attractive aspects of the human body - nor does he hold such hidden organs in contempt - but looks upon them as just as much a part of his environment and *nature* as he does his mother, the moon or the Mountains of Mourne.

On a lighter note, in a similar way when I use language socially, in my natural language Dr. Jekyll role, I use lots of abstractions for the very same purposes that you outline so eloquently above and below. It is only when the lights dim and the clock strikes twelve that I sneak to my underground language laboratory, turn on my computer, position the lightening-conductor in the hope of a strike, drink my experimental potion and turn into the grunting, slavering, claw-handed nominalist Mr. Hyde.

Therefore I do not hold the verity of a certain class of words in contempt, whilst at the same time admitting that they are profoundly useful in the utility of speech and action. I do not even hold the human users of such words in contempt, for they are for the most part so brainwashed and consequentially unthinking in relation to the abstractional hand-grenades they toss around - they cannot be blamed at all.

Anyway, as an eliminative determinist I reject any suggestion that it is their fault, for as an eliminative determinists I reject the existence of *guilt* and *rights,* which I see as arbitrary abstractions - as ideas of *that which is due to a person or governmental body by law or tradition or nature.* People and animals and the environment have no *rights* at all - so I can't be of much help as an ethicist I'm afraid. I leave the ethical ramifications of my nominalistic and deterministic eliminativist findings to others to moralise about. On another emotional, personal [non-philosophical] level I can accept revenge and recompense as perfectly understandable/acceptable personal or societal responses to criminality both social and religious, although it conflicts with my *higher level* [Dr. Jekyll] ontological analysis.

So the anomaly is that whilst I am quite ethical in my own behaviour, on an intellectual level I reject ethics as a social, legalistic and moralistic abstraction and as a system of punitive *retaliatory* modes against innocent transgressors and an impeccant cosmos, and see *blame* or *responsibility* and human *choice* as mythic in a world where judgements continue to be based upon the extrapolation of Platonic-style forms or crude Socratic-type feeble attempts at definitions of the abstractional meaning of *the Good* and *Right* and *Wrong* etc..

Though the British model represents probably one of the best sorts of pragmatic ethical/judicial systems we have at the moment, and though it is rather unrefined and primitive, it is no doubt necessary here in our country and in the violent societies that proliferate around the world.

For some it may be beyond what they can bear to accept the harsh reality that: 'that which exists' is the totality of the physical cosmos and it exists in a causally uncaring, imperative modality, which works itself out through the medium of a concatenation of causal objects - in a way that is completely disinterested, totally oblivious, and incognisant of our Lilliputian human concerns and petty attempts to attribute meaning to causal responsibility and the catenulate phenomena we briefly experience in our short existence?

Eliminativism claims that in a case of murder for example, individual human accountability is not the result of the exercise of freewill, for freewill is a fabrication. Behaviour is seen as the outcome of a catenulate, genetical and experiential causal-nexus. The attribution of guilt by society to a wrongdoer is no more than an anthropocentrically socially useful - fictional mixture of Kantian-style strictures and a Benthamite utilitarian mechanism for revenge and social stability, which, whilst holding that pleasure is the only good, and that the greatest happiness for the greatest number should be the ultimate goal of humans - also entails that wrongdoers should be dealt with accordingly in order that the happiness of the masses should not be interfered with by some guy in a yellow and black striped jersey carrying a bag marked *swag* and a jemmy.

This ontological reality represents a highly controversial problem for ethics, and it may well eventually provoke a deeper moral philosophical enquiry in a controversial area that has potentially serious future ramifications for our attitudes towards our perceptions of moral turpitude and the mechanisms of justice.

The murderer exists as the end product of an antecedal, retrospective, ever-widening, fan-like, bifurcating catenulation of causal objects that stretch back into the immense dark sack of time.

Will future offenders be seen as having committed their crimes as premeditated or impulsive acts of their own freewill, or will they be pitied as the helpless victims of an infinite number of the cosmic antecedal and contemporary deterministic existential modalities of the countless causal objects which formed them?

I deliberately ignore this moral conundrum,(subject for another discussion?] which we leave to ethicists and moral philosophers and others to ponder upon. Eliminative determinism is an ontological science not an ethical talking shop for the chattering classes, it restricts itself to concentrating specifically upon the facts of the subject matter that might prompt such an ethical enquiry.

DR. JEKYLL: It seems that you want it both ways - i. e. to use these non-existent abstractions [which I believe most of us agree are abstract and unreal *things,*] while at the same time harboring the staunch belief that they have no real meaning or existence, and are, in fact, harmful to true creative and substantive thought.[?]

MR. HYDE: Spot on! Exactly. I want it two ways. I want to use abstraction in my natural language for its social convenience, and why shouldn't I?

At the same time I continue to criticise some aspects of it - not as an abomination IN ITSELF - but criticise the way I [as Dr. Jekyll] and others use abstraction as an ontological abomination from an ontological point of view, for it is this very misunderstanding of abstraction which gives rise to religion, and the enervating transcendentalism which has the west [not to speak of the east] by the throat and force-feeds a compliant audience with reification in a like manner to the way in which geese are force-fed (cramming) to enlarge their livers in the production of foie gras which normally takes place between 9-2 at 5 weeks of age, for a period of 14-21 days, but in the case of humans being stuffed and ingurgitated with reificational abstractions for the encouragement of religion and transcendentalistic zombification from birth to the grave.

DR. JEKYLL: If language is what we have among us as our connecting fabric to our thought, then it is language that is the sine qua non of meaning conveyance - even in the most crude forms used by the Appalachian mountain folk. or perhaps the Welsh farmers, or the fermiers de laiterie.

MR. HYDE: That is true.

DR. JEKYLL: If the true meaning is effectively subverted by the secret notion that certain terms are excluded from substantive conveyance of truth, then is this not an abrogation of ones honesty in any discussion?

MR. HYDE: No. That would not help clarify or identify or change anything. To say to somebody. The word *God* is meaningless - I refuse to discuss it - is just where the Logical Positivism of A. J. Ayre went wrong - for plainly for the believer the word *God* is NOT meaningless, and for a nominalist to pretend so is completely non-productive and leads to silence rather than discussion.

Ayre's main ideas may be summarised:

(1) *We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express- that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true or reject it as being false.* Thus (apart from propositions true by definition) *anything which could not be empirically verified - verified by sense observation was meaningless.*

This should mean that any meaningful statement could be *translated* into a set of basic sensory experiences/ In his Language Truth and Logic (1936) Ayer expressed these ideas clearly - the atmosphere of the Circle was a crusade against religion and metaphysics which were all proclaimed meaningless. Note, religion was not so much wrong but rather simply without any meaning at all. Theology and transcendentalism was literally about nothing.

DR. JEKYLL: Yes, we all speak a language that contains what you call *abstract shortcuts,* but I do not see them as shortcuts; I see them as carrying as much real meaning as any other term, that you might consider to pass muster as a legitimate representation of *truth* or real meaning.

MR. HYDE: You have put your finger on it - for though a nominalist [in the *meta-language* of ontological discussion - NOT normal language] sees *beauty* as meaningless , in the sense that only objects considered beautiful exist you do not see them as shortcuts; but see them as carrying as much real meaning [and by this I take it that includes *ontological* meaning?) as real objects?

This is like the logical positivists [now more or less defunct] who considered the meaningfulness of the word *God* as meaningless, and refused to discuss with them, when for the believer the term carried as much real meaning as any other term, that the might consider to pass muster as a legitimate representation of *truth* or real meaning.

DR. JEKYLL: If I say: *It is a beautiful morning,* understanding as I do that *beauty* is a non-existent state or concept, you surely have an understanding as complete as if I had said something more precisely indicative of a state of
*beauty* that uses purely concrete terms, that does not fall prey to the inaccuracy of such an abstraction. It is that understanding that is the value and significance of my phrase that is most important - not the fact that I took shortcuts to get to that meaning.

MR. HYDE: But of course if you used the term: *It is a beautiful morning,* I too would have an complete understanding as complete as if you had said something more precisely indicative of a state of *beauty* that uses purely concrete terms, but that commonplace use of social natural language has nothing at all to do with an ontological discussion that might ensue if we went in your house, sat in the lounge and discussed Plato and his forms and the ontological implications of Socrates abortive attempts to define the word *beauty* and his discussions trying to pin-down other abstractions which ALWAYS ended in failure and exasperation.

DR. JEKYLL: In fact I would go so far as to say any language that is bereft of those non-existent abstractions, is a hollow and weak collection of what one might call primitive references to purely and only concrete ones that are naked as to their communicative power. Is it not the case that what is most important is what is conveyed, as opposed to the niceties of a position that might deny the philosophical value of the details of that conveyance?

MR. HYDE: I have made the point over and over on this list that the nominalist has NO agenda for eliminating these very important elements of language, but to merely change people's attitudes towards them and understand that they do not REALLY exist like REAL OBJECTS [are bereft of nominata] . Nominalists are people who LOVE their language and are not linguistic vandals who wish to denude their own language of some of its most helpful and sometimes beautiful terms.

DR. JEKYLL: Hume makes a point of this in the introduction to his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, dividing moral philosophy into the two categories of the human/action one, and the speculative and reasoning one - the latter being seen by Hume to be often befuddled by the intricacies of such analytic introspection as to be empty of the human/action element -and we are acting humans above all.

MR. HYDE: I would place nominalism firmly in a *from human reasoning - to human action* category - if that is, by *action* we can include the activity of many nominalists in the writing of their articles and books and treatises and making speeches and giving lectures and making television appearances etc, though I must confess it is true we don't often hear of nominalists flying aircraft into tower blocks or even participating in rallies and street demonstrations, but then neither do most the supporters of philosophical doctrines? ;-)

DR. JEKYLL: In other words, the value of your position, as tough as it is, seems to be a very lofty one, above the fray of most real human discourse and action. What I would like to hear [and I am very serious here] is, as I hinted at in my last post, the dangers of completely ignoring your thesis in matters of real consequence in the human affairs. I believe they are there - especially as regards religion and politics. But I would enjoy hearing your expound on this issue. Heidegger attempted to harness together his outlandish notions and the burgeoning bêtise of Nazis

Heidegger attempted to harness together his outlandish notions and the burgeoning bêtise of Nazism

MR. HYDE: I have never in the past regarded nominalism as acting in the sense of a political party or forming or finding a base in a political party in the same way that for example Heidegger attempted to harness together his outlandish notions and the burgeoning bêtise of Nazism. I see my paltry efforts as being aimed at academia basically, but also at any passing intelligent layman who might stumble upon my website. The thing with writing books or creating websites is that one never knows - one seldom gets any feedback - as to whether or not some unknown person has read one's poem, or philosophical piece or been influenced by one's idea - for hardly anyone actually ever writes to an author [as you did with Chomsky] or a webmaster. At least with a website one can monitor the number of *hits* certain poems, articles or essays get [the *page- reads* of own site [The British Sansom Society] number 797 today [it is only 5pm here now too] and that is encouraging is it not?

There is a remote possibility that someone somewhere might be influenced sufficiently to mention to others that it might be worth while taking another look at the abstractions we use, and to ponder upon the thought that they might be problematic but the effects [if any] of such imagined conversations might not bear fruit for years - or even after we are both long dead.