From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Objectivism, Aug.4
Summary: this may make even less sense than the original post
Date: 13 Aug 92 00:11:08 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

In article <1992Aug12.204436.8690@cis.umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:

>	This is important, that even very briefly, Smith has corrupted 
> metaphys-ics w/epistemology. Forget about "point" or "talk" as they are 
> mere epistemology. Metaphysics or existence just exists.

Excerpts from "The Philosopher at Large: At the Reivers'" copyright 1992 by
Tom Price, all rights reserved, blah blah

[stuff deleted]

Pillboy held up a small hand mirror; I checked my face paint and my 
headdress. They were a little uneven but that didn't matter, especially in the 
shifting firelight. Almost rakish, I thought with some satisfaction. I mounted 
the platform.

"We are supposed to provide a system of metaphysics. Let me define the term,
although I'm certain that I'll define it to mean just what you all mean by
it. I use the term metaphysics to refer to the system of thoughts with which 
we think reality, which both structure and in some ways constrain our
thoughts of reality.

"The metaphysical system of thoughts that I am about to describe is a simple
one, as required by the competition. Furthermore, it all depends upon a single,
familiar notion. That notion is subjectivity." I paused and noticed that
my eyes had adjusted to the light. So I looked around at everybody.

Then I said, "Subjectivity!" and I looked around at everybody again. "I live, 
and you live, and each one of us lives in our own unique world of experience, 
which is ultimately inaccessible to any other. That's what I mean by 
subjectivity. Now, I agree that there is a 'real world out there', a 
'Mind-Independent Reality' which is there whether I'm there to see it or not,
but I can't know it directly and neither can you or anyone. All experience is
essentially subjective. That's my metaphysic for this competition, and I 
propose," I said, "that if we accept it, then we are required, consequently, 
not only to love our neighbor as ourself but our entire world as ourself. 
And it won't be hard, it'll be the most natural thing in the world.

[stuff deleted]

"Now that we've shown that all these intuitively obvious ways of defining 
ourselves as distinct, individual entities do not work, here is a workable way 
to define yourself as distinct from me, and it follows from what we said about 
subjectivity: What makes me different from you is precisely the different world
that I live in. My total experiance is, ultimately, unique. I see things 
differently than you do. I see an object or a situation and I see different 
potentials, I see different aspects of it as important. This is because I have 
to interpret it on the basis of all my prior experience, and you have to do the
same, and our prior experiences differ, so of course we see different things. 

"In sum, we can define any self in terms of its unique world of experience.
That's the first point I wanted to make."

"And now we're nearly done! Self-love and the instinct to self-preservation are
innate. Even those of us who cannot in all good conscience say that we 'love'
ourselves still have feelings of responsibility, care, and concern for our
selves. But what is the self? We have just defined it as the totality
of our experience! Consequently, the feelings of responsibility which we
formerly felt and still feel towards the health and order of our own mental,
emotional, and physical processes, will now be extended to include the health
and order of everything going on all around us! We will not love our neighbor 
as ourself; our neighbor will *be* ourself, as Dr. Raymond Smullyan has had 
occasion to say in a related context -- and so will everything else be ourself.
Ta daaa!"

Now I was cross-examined by the other contestants. 

"Cute, but you're mixing up metaphysics and epistemology!" said one.

"Probably," I said.

"You're making a category error --" he said. 

"THE SOUND OF MY SOUP!" said the whole crowd,
simultaneously. Not only are there lots of in jokes at the Reivers', there 
are in examples. Or else there are in examples that are jokes, or in 
jokes that -- you get the idea.
 
"-- you're mixing up What There Is with What You Know." 

"Where?" I said.

"In what you just said!" he said. "You're trying to define yourself as distinct
from other selves, and, by extension, from the rest of the universe. This is
a question of What There Is, or How The Universe Is. That's Metaphysics.
But then your experience is What You Know. That's Epistemology."

"So?" I said.

"You're answering questions of Metaphysics with an approach that belongs in
Epistemology."

"Look," I said, "I don't see the problem, unless of course Aristotle brought
these categories down from Mount Sinai in God's handwriting.
It is unreasonable to expect me to speak authoritatively about what I don't 
know."

"So you only know your experience," he said.

"Right," I said.

"Do you mean that the inside of a house you've never been in isn't real?" he
asked.

"Why should I think in terms of, for example --"

"AUSTRALIA!" shouted all my friends. We'd been through this before.

" -- Australia as a real entity if 
I've never been there?" I said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a 
linguistic entity, and that's fine. In day-to-day practice, real entities and 
linguistic entities are functionally equivalent. But they are still not the
same, and from time to time the distinction becomes important."

"So are you concerned with things in Australia?" he asked. "Are the linguistic
entities that you experience part of you too? If linguistic entities are part
of your experience, what about inferences you make? Are they part of your 
experience? What about psychotic episodes? If your world is essentially 
subjective, what is your assurance that it corresponds to other peoples'?"

"What other people?" I said. 

"Oh, come on -- "

"I'm dead serious," I said. "There -- wait, now that I think about it," I said,
(struck by a sudden thought) "there is another way to define the self. 
We could just imagine an immortal soul with a serial
number on it that determines the uniqueness of you. But there's no empirical
evidence for it, and it would never be more than speculation. Once you separate
What There Is from What You Know there's no end to speculative metaphysics, and
all you have to do is keep it internally consistent. And it never stops. You
end up with Jade Buddhas, and forty-leven heavens, and, and -- bushwah upon 
bushwah!" I suddenly ran out of vocabulary. I dropped a stitch, I missed a 
shift, I slipped a disc, I split the kirk. No, that's not right, I --

"Bushwah?" he said, surprised.

"Um, it means 'nonsense,'" I said. Started playing with idioms and forgot where
I was. So much for rhetorical flourishes. I was going along fine talking about
Jade Buddhas and then the wheels came off, the rabbit died, I sold the farm, I 
bought a boat, I missed the cut, I --

[stuff deleted]

> You are epistemologically privileged to know our wisdom. Our 1985
> essay, "Existence 2," is available thru net.

Please send it to the address below.

> Curb your philosophy... Identify your context and remain within its limit.

Sold.

Tom

******************************************************************************
 Tom Price  |  Obscure Dropout  |  tp0x@cs.cmu.edu  |  Simplicity, simplicity
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