Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 19:47:41 -0600 From: Maureen Anderson <maureen at uchicago.edu>
Buena'Dias, Rob,
[Rob paraphrasing Chomsky:]
>'the whole issue of whether there's a physical basis for mental structures
>is a rather empty issue,' because, in the development of modern science,
>'the concept "physical" has been extended step by step to cover anything we
>understand', so that 'when we ultimately begin to understand the properties
>of mind, we shall simply ... extend the notion "physical" to cover these
>properties as well.'
I think this might be relevant to some UG criticisms, but not so much for Deacon's. (You might be responding to my misled response to Chuck.)
Deacon's simply saying he has a different explanation for Chomsky's "incontrovertible proof" that UG requires some special thing (be it a cogitans thing or an extensa thing) located inside the brain. Deacon say's it's not a thing but a process. And that that process doesn't just go on inside the brain but is part of a whole interactive milieu that's both inside and outside of it. Now whether that process is In the Last Instance something more like mind, or more "physical," or something requiring more nuanced thinking of both, that's a different sort of question.
BTW, your Chomsky paraphrase on the how the concept of "physical" gets extended called to mind the reverse observation, by Graham Greene's infamous whiskey priest:
"I can't think how a man like you can believe in those things. The Indians, yes. Why, the first time they see an electric light they think it's a miracle."
"And I dare say the first time you saw a man raised from the dead you might think so too. [...] Oh, it's funny, isn't it? It isn't a case of miracles not happening -- it's just a case of people calling them something else. Can't you see the doctors round the dead man? He isn't breathing any more, his pulse has stopped, his heart's not beating: he's dead. Then somebody gives him back his life, and they all -- what's the expression -- reserve their opinion. They won't say it's a miracle, because that's a word they don't like. Then it happens again and again perhaps -- because God's about on earth -- and they say: there aren't miracles, it is simply that we have enlarged our conception of what life is. Now we know you can be alive without pulse, breath, heart-beats. And they invent a new word to describe that state of life, and they say science has again disproved a miracle." He giggled again. "You can't get round them." (_Power and the Glory_)
--Maureen