On Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:08:47 -0500 Dace <edace at flinthills.com> wrote:
> However, it's true that there's no essence to individuality. There's no core
of "selfness."
There is no core substance, but there is a core "self" - someting Real.
> Ultimately, we are individuations of a collective, unconscious
mind.
I would say that the substance is collective - ethnicity, language, belonging and so on. What we share can always be made explicit, what is unconscious cannot be made explict completely. "We all need food." This isn't some sort of mysterious collective unconscious, it's material.
> This is a fact of evolution.
If so, evolutionists are either behind the times or just cryptically careless.
> The problem is that we have no way of discussing this in a scientific manner.
Science is like the Parisian prefect in Poe's purloined letter, doomed never to find the letter on the table because they're looking for a secret letter on the table. They're stuck looking for a secret, when all then need to look for is a letter.
> While it's true that there's no substance to the self, this also applies to
matter.
There is substance to the self, but the self is not substance. People are willing to stake their entire existence of the stupidest of things, like a can of pop. This denotes substance, but it doesn't limit the self to that substance.
> Regarding both matter and mind, there is no absolute substance or
determination. This is *good* news. It means that freedom is a fundamental
property of nature.
No, because now you've equated nature with substance (freedom). Nature "says nothing" - it is Real. As Real, it lacks nothing - and thereby freedom is meaningless to nature. Human beings, on the other hand, are natural beings, but they are also subjects (nature doesn't have an unconsious). And, as subjects, we are lacking. What are they lacking? Freedom.
LacKen