>Wordworth's point was partly the obvious one that if you rip a
>rabbit to bits you kill it. In relation to the science at issue,
>however, he also attributed motive.
>
>The materialism in question can't explain life. Without pulling a
>rabbit from a hat, you can't get something possessing the
>characteristics that define a living thing from bits of dead matter.
You can't? How do you explain reproduction of living things then? The only raw materials a pair of rabbits need to create more rabbits, is dead grass. So obviously it can be done.
> The argument demonstrating this is summarized in the Whitehead
>material I mentioned.
If you say so. Comes across as gibberish to me I'm afraid, but maybe I'm too simple to see the emperor's new clothes.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
>Latour himself misunderstands Whitehead. He thinks Whitehead's idea
>of transforming "matters of fact" into "matters of concern" is
>illustrated by the following claim of Turing about what's involved
>in bringing a machine to life.
>
>>"In attempting to construct such machines we should not be
>>irreverently usurping [God's] power of creating souls, any more
>>than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in
>>either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the
>>souls that He creates" ("CM," p. 443).
>
>The rabbit from a hat problem alone makes this an impossible
>phantasy. Strangelove indeed.
>
>This mistake about about "concern" is connected to the following
>mistaken claim about what Whitehead means by a "society":
>
>>the word the latter used in Process and Reality to describe "actual
>>occasions," his word for my matters of concern, is the word
>>societies
>
>Whitehead uses the word "society" to designate a set of internally
>related "actual occasions."
>
>"The point of a 'society' as the term is here used, is that it is
>self-sustaining; in other words, that it is its own reason. Thus a
>society is more than a set of [actual] entities to which the same
>class-name applies: that is to say, it involves more than a merely
>mathematical conception of 'order.' To constitute a society, the
>class-name has got to apply to each member, by reason of genetic
>derivation from other members of that same society. The members of
>the society are alike because, by reason of their common character,
>they impose on other members of the society the conditions which
>lead to that likeness." (Process and Reality, p. 89)
>
>This is an "internal relations" view of essence. It matches the
>view of essence set out in the sixth thesis on Feuerbach. This is
>the ontological underpinning of the idea that the degree of
>enlightenment characteristic of individual self-consciousness is the
>product of the social relations within which individuals develop and
>live.
>
>I pointed sometime ago to Bion's psychoanalytic explanation of the
>kind of self-consciousness to which the various features of the
>materialist ontology would appear self-evident and for which
>Whitehead's ideas about "feelings," "internal relations" and
>"self-determination" would be incomprehensible. The post containing
>this explanation is at:
>
>http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0208/0953.html
>
>Ted
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