From: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Philosophy and myth
Date: 12 Apr 92 17:04:51 GMT
Reply-To: Leo Smith <shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Gated to News by demon.co.uk


 cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)

(only significant bits retained)

        Some metaphysical questions seem to have a form that looks
        very much like the form of an empirical--or
        scientific--question. For example, "What is the nature of
        consciousness?" is one that used to exercise me a great deal.
        I thought that consciousness was some sort of
        "process"--something that "goes on", so I wanted to find an
        explanation of just what kind of process this is.
        Wittgenstein address this very point in section 308 of
        PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS:

                 How does the philosophical problem about mental
                 processes and states and about behaviourism arise?
                 --The first step is the one that altogether escapes
                 notice.

If he means what I think he means - I have to agree.....

                 We talk of processes and states and leave
                 their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall
                 know more about them--we think. But that is just
                 what commits us to a particular way of looking at
                 the matter. For we have a definite concept of what
                 it means to learn to know a process better. (The
                 decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been
                 made, and it was the very one that we thought quite
                 innocent.)

What I take *that* to mean is that before any discussion or
investigation can take place, we have to have assumed some structure
at some level in order for the investigator and the investigated to
be considered to exist...

                 --And now the analogy which was to make
                 us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we
                 have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the
                 yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we had
                 denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want
                 to deny them.

"To peek behind consciousness with consciousness - That cannot be
done" (Chinese philosopher)

        When we set up a philosophical question like this ("What
        characterizes the process of thinking? How does the mind
        interact with the body?") we believe that we are posing it in
        neutral terms, but we are not. We have an analogy in mind,
        and the analogy invites us to explore the question just as
        though we were answering a question, say, of physics or
        biology.

        When we ask the question like this, it seems as though
        getting an answer were a matter of doing a hazy kind of
        physics, or a diaphanous neurophysiology. The temptation is
        to think that just as we have theories in physics, we need a
        theory of consciousness; just as we have mechanisms in
        neurophysiology, we need a mechanism that illuminates the
        mind-body interaction.

        Though such questions have the form of questions that can be
        answered empirically (by an experiment), they can't really be
        answered like this. To attempt to answer them
        empirically--for example, by taking photographs (as some have
        claimed to take photographs of the "auras" that surround
        persons) leads one deeper in mystical confusion.

Up to here, Peter, I am right alongside you.

        The most valuable thing one can do in connection with such
        questions is to examine why one wants to ask them.

Why do you say that? This is almost Zen-like. Is that what you mean?
that asking questions like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?"
direct attention to the mechanisms of language and the modelling
process rather than to hands and clapping in general.

        For example, what is one asking who asks, "What is
        consciousness?". What is the basis of this question? What do
        we mean by "consciousness"? _Does_ this word have a meaning
        when it's used like this?

I think it does, and my 'explanation' - which may or may not get shot
down in flames, is this:

In order for us, as humans, to arrive at the view we have today of
the world, and the ability we have to manipulate what we refer to as
science, ideas, symbols and so on, required at some point in the
history of <ourselves> a distinct ordering of our experience into

        (i) That which experiences (some abstract consciousness or
        mind)

        (ii) That which is experienced (space-time-matter).

From the above arrangement, our whole scientific outlook can be
derived. *However* problems occur, and quite rightly so, when we
attempt to incorporate either (i) in theories about (ii) or
vice-versa. i.e. to produce a physical theory of consciousness, or a
totally solipsistic view of reality.

What I, and I think others, are trying to bring to this newsgroup, is
to start in some sense with a realisation that the current state of
affairs is as I have described, and look at some other possible
'assumptions' of a more mythic or mystical and religious nature even,
which might form starting points for other cosmologies.

Then the (social) function of the metaphysical philosopher would be
seen to be to :-

        (a) Confirm that indeed we are the victims of innate
        assumptions in *every* interaction we make with each other
        and the world, and

        (b) Act as arbiters over the nature of the assumptions we
        might make in order to form the basic 'realities' we inhabit.
        In this context I understand in my own terms the reasons for
        placing ethics inside of philosophy: Ethics allows of
        discussions on human motivations and needs, whereas current
        philosophy seems to operate in a social and moral vacuum.
        That is to say that - to me - Ethics is how you arrive at one
        worldview rather than another, whilst standard philosophy is
        used to 'clean up' any given worldview.

In the context of what I have stated above, the function of myth can
be seen to be a statement of the basis of fundamentally different
worldviews. This is what a previous poster meant when he described
the 'Big Bang' as a myth invented by scientists: If you accept the
division of experience into mind versus space-time-matter, then at
the beginning of Time (as thus defined) you will find all Matter (as
so defined) concentrated in all Space (as so defined). Somehow this
does not surprise me :-)

(But who was there to experience it? :-))

 - However, all you need is a higher Power in a dimension beyond ours,
to completely change the picture. I would refer those interested to
various extremely humourous science fiction cosmologies such as
Terry Pratchett's Strata etc. for complete debunking of evolution and
the Big Bang.

The point to make is that - as I believe L.W. seems to have been
making (and I admit my opinion of philosophers in general and LW in
particular has improved on reading that excerpt) - one cannot 'prove'
a particular reality model in absolute terms. As other posters have
pointed out, to some extent the reality of the Copenhagen School's
theories is to move the focus away from the vexed question of
Ultimate Reality, towards the examination of models for their simple
utility in matching and correlating experience of the microcosm and
macrocosm.

What I would personally like to see is that attitude extended deep
into the realms of metaphysics so that it is possible to question the
whole implied assumption of the everyday and scientific world we live
in, and that metaphysicians could feel free to 'freely fantasise'
cosmologies that are (at least) not inconsistent with experience,
knowing that we could rely on the intellectual swordsmanship of the
more analytical philosophers to reduce these fantasies to potentially
useful schemas.

Myths are those descriptions of might-have-beens or might-be's that
allow us to temporarily escape the everyday assumptions, into other
worlds. Those worlds are no less real than the everyday, except that
they are not utilised to the same extent. There are those (for
example) who firmly believe that by the millenium, some christ like
figure will emerge to affect us all in some way: This is not provable
or disprovable, but the extent to which a deeply held *assumption* of
this nature may affect the lives of those who so assume, and those
who do not, is a valid subject for investigation. If the
metaphysicians of the world are not prepared to carry this out - who
is? Anthropologists? Social psychologists? - But they cannot, since
by definition they have to operate within the context of ideas where
such an event is 'impossible' or 'lunatic fringe' or whatever. That
is not approaching the subject with the inherent lack of bias that is
the hallmark of the philosopher.


I believe that we desperately need to promulgate the concept - not
that the Big Bang and Science is a description of what *IS*, but that
it is an utterly _utilitarian_ way of *looking* at what is. This
immediately reconciles science and religion: Science then becomes a
Utilitarian worldview, for achieving results in the physical world,
and Religion becomes an (Ethical?) system which attempts to achieve
other results than strictly utilitarian. Neither is *real* and
neither is *better*.

And why is this necessary? Because socially there appears to be a
widening rift between rational scientists on the one hand, and
various fundamental religious movements on the other - not just in
Western society either. Sitting in the Mid West and watching Islamic
leaders describe Western civilisation as 'The Great Satan' may not
appear to be of great importance, but a major conflict has been
entered into along these lines already, and it might be relevant for
those who profess to be experts to examine the cosmologies of those
that denounce them, in order to identify the fundamental issues.

In conclusion, I have tried to draw attention to what I feel is an
underlying problem with all logical systems, and point out why I feel
that it should be the business of philosphers and metaphysicians to
discuss alternative structures, both in a pure senses, and in a
social context. Philosophy can be a means of increasing bigotry and
prejudice, but it ought to be the means of eliminating it.

Leo