A passage for Bill Hoyt

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Awhile ago, Bill made this statement, which I am still using as my email sig line:

Concerning dualism: Why should I be concerned with your impotent, girlie-ghost? It seems to me that, if it exists at all, my chemicals are far more powerful. My surgery trumps the phantasm every time. Why should I care that you can construct such a lame ideation? I can put it to sleep by turning the gas knob.

I just finished reading Rita Carter's Mapping the Mind, which ends with this paragraph:

The findings outlined in this book give only the sketchiest impression of the landscape of the mind---the task of creating a detailed picture is one for the new millennium and beyond. Yet I believe one thing is already clear: there is no ghost in this place, no monsters in the depths, no lands ruled by dragons. What today's mind voyagers are discovering is instead a biological system of awe-inspiring complexity. There is no need for us to satisfy our sense of wonder by conjuring phantoms---the world within our heads is more marvellous than anything we can dream up.

~~ Paul

 

[!Xx+-Rational-+xX!]

I swear I will start posting here when drunk!

 

[Yahweh]

the world within our heads is more marvellous than anything we can dream up.

No one ever said reality was unremarkable...

 

[BillHoyt]

No one ever said reality was unremarkable...

Weyellll, they get close to it, however, when they make dualist assertions. The argument is usually a thinly-disguised argument from ignorance: "Science doesn't yet understand consciousness, therefore I assert there be ghosts in those machines." In that sense, they are saying reality is unremarkable and that they must substitute this fantasy to explain mind.

 

[BillHoyt]

Paul,

Its a good passage, btw. Thanks for calling my attention to it.