Re: In defense of Dualism (typos corrected)

From: Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 12:03:15 -0400

Dear Joao,

    Your point is well taken! My failure was to point out that my 'rant' was against those that would claim that dualism can never be a viable alternative, especially to a Numbers-are-all-that-exists-monism. Thank you for pointing out that such is called Pythagorianism.
    OTOH, I see a failure in most discussions of Platonism in that nowhere is the concept of Becoming considered to be meaningful. I am trying, unsuccessfully it seems, to argue that it is a mistake to consider "Being" as fundamental and that any form of Becoming is mere illusion. We can use the launguage of Fixed points to show that Beingness, that which is is immutable, can be faithfully identified as fixed points in a space(?) of Becoming. Platonia should be taken as that ultimate level of Existence where all forms of Becoming - not Being! - are fixed points, some kind of unique and irriducible Category of Automorphisms, and not Existence in-itself.

    My words are ill-posed here, I apologize.

Kindest regards,

Stephen

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Joao Leao
  To: Stephen Paul King
  Cc: mirai.domain.name.hidden ; everything-list.domain.name.hidden ; time.domain.name.hidden.com
  Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 11:40 AM
  Subject: Re: In defense of Dualism (typos corrected)


    snip

  Dear SPK
  Though I entirely agree with what you state above, I take issue with your
  characterization of "Platonism" as some form of mathematical monism.
  If you had called "Pythagorianism" to the doctrine that "only numbers
  exist" you would most likely be correct. Platonism, however, is very
  definitely a form of ontological dualism: Platonists never deny the
  existence of the physical world, though they insist that it exists as
  a corrupted copy of the world of forms, that one holding the "true"
  reality. It is one think to reject the false, and another one to deny
  its existence! Sorry but this is not a pedantic point.

  In other words: in all you say above you argue as a true Platonist,
  (only one that does not know he is one)!

     [SPK]
        Consciousness seems to be more of a functional relationship between the
    Physical and the Mental, the Outside and the Inside, as Chalmer's states.
    When the two dual aspects are taken to the ultimate level of Existence
    in-itself, the distinction between the two vanishes. Russell saw this long
    ago, he denoted it as "neutral monism". It is too bad that he made the
    mistake of excluding non-well founded sets from consideration.
     
  If that ultimate level of Existence, as you put it, was as accessible to us as
  the world of (mathematical) forms is to our minds, than I would take it as
  an indication that we (our sould) would had already migrated back to it in
  old platonic parlance. Till than dualism seems quite unavoidable.
  Kindly,

  -Joao
Received on Fri May 20 2005 - 12:12:35 PDT