>The assumption here is that nature
>involves nothing more than whatever a few clever humans have concocted in
>their laboratories.
>
>_________
>
>CB: The assumption here by whom ? Not me.
>___________
>
>
>
>Nature and life are just a kind of warm-up to the
>really great achievement, which is Western technology.
>
>____________
>
>CB: I am more of an internationalist, stone age economist enthusiast. I
like the wheel and the discovery of fire in terms of human technology. And I
like Eastern technology, and Southern, and African.
>
And you also believe that memory has nothing more to it than photography or
audiotape. Vision is basically TV in the back of the head. Cognition is
your brain as computer. You believe that Western, i.e. modern technology is
just like what nature does, only more rational, more sleek. Even better
than the real thing.
>
>_______
>
>CB: And the present is all that exists (for now :>)). There is nothing in
the world but matter.
>
>And do you say this every night before you go to bed?
>CB: No, only when explaining elementary philosophy.
>
You must mean pulp philosophy.
> Bergson makes much of this point. For
>him, it demonstrates that matter and mind are not two separate things.
>There is *one* thing which we abstract into two, and then-- prefering one
>over the other-- "reduce" the other to the first. The elimination of mind
>is thus a mind game.
>
>___________
>
>CB: The " I think therefore I'm not" game.
>
Can I use that?
>>
>>There is one existence: matter. "There is nothing in the world but matter
>in motion, and matter in motion cannot move otherwise than in space and
>time." - Lenin
>>
>Do you have any reason for believing this, or is Lenin your Paul (with Marx
>in the role of Jesus)?
>>
>>My reason for believing it is my experience, perceptions in life,
supported by empirical evidence.
Is it your experience that there is nothing at all besides the current moment? That can't be right. You couldn't carry on a conversation if you didn't have a sense of past along with the other five. Yet, if reality is limited to the absolute present, then there must be a memory device of some kind in your brain. That way you can access a recording of the past instead of having to literally recall it. Since there is no scientific evidence for such a thing (not that neurologists haven't searched) then you must be basing this knowledge, as you say, on experience and "perceptions in life." So, I take it you have perceptions of this memory device. You experience the retrieval of information from your brain. You have awareness of your brain. I'm just wondering-- Does it have buttons, like a tapedeck? Is it like a computer with a mouse? Are there great long file drawers of oddly distorted photographs in there?
Ted
I am an atheist. My attention to Lenin is the like attention to a leading
scientist in the history of the discipline we are discussing, nothing like a
religious uncritical belief, dummy.
>
>CB