>On Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:08:47 -0500 Dace <edace at flinthills.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
And matter is not mysterious? It has properties which act invisibly at a
distance. It can only be understood according to fields and energy. At its
core, no human concepts have any application whatsoever. We have no idea
how it relates to mentality or even if we're talking about two different
things.
>> This is a fact of evolution.
>
>If so, evolutionists are either behind the times or just cryptically
careless.
It's a fact that the human mind evolved from the animal mind. The animal
mind is wholly unconscious, i.e. it lacks perception of itself. Thus
consciousness arises from unconscious mentality. Consciousness gives us
much greater possibilities than animals have for developing ourselves as
individuals. But even humans are all basically the same. If we didn't
share the same core mental orientation, we could not communicate.
>
>> 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.
So they can never find life, because they're looking for some kind of mechanism. They can never find memory, because they're looking for stored information. They can never find information, because they're looking for ordered molecules. They can never find novelty, because they're looking for a rearrangement of pre-existent elements, and so on and so on and so on.
Is that what you're saying?
>> 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.
>
Are you saying that the substance of our existence is our relation with each
other and with objects? As though there's nothing internal to us?
>> 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.
Perhaps I should have written, "Freedom is intrinsic to nature." In other words, there is genuine novelty to nature and not merely pre-determined possibilities which become actualized.
Human beings, as subjects, lack freedom? What does this mean?
Ted