Re: Reality vs. Perception of Reality

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:40:22 -0400

May I offer the following quote as a potential catalyst for Bruno and
Colin:

If thought is laryngeal motion, how should any one think more truly
than the wind blows? All movements of bodies are equally necessary, but
they cannot be discriminated as true and false. It seems as nonsensical
to call a movement true as a flavour purple or a sound avaricious. But
what is obvious when thought is said to be a certain bodily movement
seems equally to follow from its being the effect of one. Thought
called knowledge and thought called error are both necessary results of
states of brain. These states are necessary results of other bodily
states. All the bodily states are equally real, and so are the
different thoughts; but by what right can I hold that my thought is
knowledge of what is real in bodies? For to hold so is but another
thought, an effect of real bodily movements like the rest. . . These
arguments, however, of mine, if the principles of scientific
[naturalism]... are to stand unchallenged, are themselves no more than
happenings in a mind, results of bodily movements; that you or I think
them sound, or think them unsound, is but another such happening; that
we think them no more than another such happening is itself but yet
another such. And it may be said of any ground on which we may attempt
to stand as true, Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum ["It flows
and will flow swirling on forever" (Horace, Epistles, I, 2, 43)]. (H.
W. B. Joseph, Some Problems in Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1931),
pp. 14-15)

Regards,
Tom Caylor
Received on Fri Jul 29 2005 - 12:46:25 PDT