From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Aug 27 2001 - 22:45:16 MDT
David McDivitt writes
> how we see things does change what exists or "what is". This is
> because we live in a world of language, objectifications, and mental
> abstractions. We do not relate to things so much as definitions of
> things. How or what we define is therefore important.
Why are you more certain that you live in a world of language,
objectification, and mental abstractions, than you live in a
world of earth, air, fire, and water? Such things as language
could not exist were they not evolved in matter creatures, nor
could mental abstractions. You are choosing to build up your
model of what the world is on top of very shaky ideas that you
can't even know that other people possess, because you can't
even know that there are other people.
> The cosmos does not "act" any way at all. Of itself the cosmos does
> nothing. The cosmos does not even exist unless we say it exists.
How do you know that there is a "we"? I suggest that your inference
that there are other people is much weaker than your inference that
there is a 3-D world outside your skin.
> Concepts come and concepts go. Those having usefulness remain.
Remain where, in what? In your head?
> I challenge you to tell me what objective reality is. If you believe it
> exists you should be able to say what it is. Feel free to use as many
> screens full of text as necessary.
It is not possible to *say* what objective reality is. You can't
even say what an apple or a pencil *is*. This is an indication of
aberrant, though mostly harmless, thinking. Korzybski, on the other
hand, thought this quite un-sane.
Lee Corbin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:10:10 MST