| | I'm only going to do this once. My supposed fibbing is about the primacy of consciousness horseshit that Daniel Barnes constantly and consistently advocates (when you can pin him down), but denies that he does - calling it "non-physical existence" and "abstractions."
The following is a quote from the horse-shitter's mouth I happened on here by accident right after the smarm swamped and flooded our last exchange - where I actually tried to be civil, but my horseshit level went through the roof.
We can, very crudely, stand back and see 3 competing types of "primacy" theories, which we can roughly summarise as follows:
1) "Primacy of physical existence" theories. That is, there is a physical world out there of trees, rocks, food and Bon Jovi records which we cannot avoid or wish away. Held by: Rand, Popper, many other philosophers, many human beings.
2) "Primacy of consciousness" theories. There is no actual physical world, merely our perceptions of it. Held by, oh, solipsists, radical subjectivists, Berkeley I suppose, and a few others, and very few non-philosophers.
3) "Primacy of non-physical existence". There are abstract, eternal things that precede the physical world, and the physical world is a mere imitation of. Held by: Plato, natch, and most world religions.
Of course, most thinkers fall in between and round about these categories rather than firmly in them. But what's interesting to me is not how true or false they are, but that they seem to be attempts that date from very ancient times to describe *distinctly different types of human experience*, to explain them, and to put them in some kind of cosmological order.
In parallel with this attempt at ordering, there is a natural tendency towards *reduction*: to try to reduce all 3 to two, or to one, and while but this reductionist approach has taught us a lot on the way, it hass not met with anything like final success to my mind. These categories stubbornly, and roughly, refuse to submit, creating problems for the reductionist from whichever way she should approach it. The reductionist usually resorts to solutions that are either *verbalist* - playing with words to make it look as tho the reduction has been successfully achieved - or simply cheerfully ignoring that type of experience which does not fit the reductionist's particular starting point.
This leads, I think to much wasted time trying to pretend that the physical world doesn't really exist, or that consciousness doesn't exist, or that abstractions don't exist etc etc etc.
My attitude is: *all three* of these types of experiences seem to be real, and there are good arguments that suggest they are not illusions of one sort or another. And if it don't fit, don't force it.
Let's hit that third one again. "There are abstract, eternal things that precede the physical world, and the physical world is a mere imitation of."
Mere imitation of?
Then this: "My attitude is: *all three* of these types of experiences seem to be real..."
At least horseshit exists and stinks on its own in my world.
If this third alternative runs to the logical conclusion, it becomes primacy-of-consciousness (the denial of which is present in the horse-shitter's preempted attempt to label such logic as "reductionism.")
These "abstract eternal things" that the "physical world is a mere imitation of" have a name - a single one. They are called God, the mother of all consciousnesses - in practically all cultures during all of human history. Scratch the proposition enough and that is where it always goes.
When "non-physical existents" are proposed as being many things, not merely one, they are still advocated as ruling physical existence in the form of abstractions - or "impacting" on physical existence or "interacting" with it ("impact" and "interact" always meaning "control" in the end). They are always superior. In this particular horse-shitter's case, they are "eternal." (A brain that contains them, for instance, is not.) That is their superiority. Many gods in this case, not one God.
There is only one entity that can abstract, however. A consciousness. Period. That's where it leads to, folks. One can go ring-around-the-rosie in a smarmy horseshit hoedown all day long, but you always end up there. Primacy-of-one-consciousness-or-another.
All this gets dressed up in "ists" and "isms" and name-dropping and intellectual babble to look like something else. A festival of sarcasm and smarm is laid on thick. But all it ever will be is primacy-of-consciousness in the horseshit flavor. Abstracts without consciousness do not exist. A consciousness without a physical brain does not exist. Whoever claims these things is advocating primacy-of-consciousness.
There is another catch. In the end, you have to accept it all on faith, with the "all-or-nothing" alternative proposed being "determinism" or whatever other flavor is being argued at the moment. (There was even a silly presumption in that previous exchange that I was ignorant of such a basic religious doctrine as determinism, which is another kind of shit dressed up to look like philosophy in this case - you just have to do a logical chain to get there).
Faith it is in the end, though. Faith it always will be in order to accept "non-physical existence." That is also denied with oodles of smarm. I just don't have the patience any longer to wade through even more horseshit to show where the faith is hidden. (Here's a hint: you can't get there through the five senses and forming percepts.)
As I said. This type of explanation regarding this particular horse-shitter will only happen once. I am not a liar and I refuse to interact with assholes who call me one.
Fucking trolls.
Michael
PS - My sincere apology to horses. They deserve better.
(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 8/21, 8:53pm)
(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 8/21, 9:03pm)
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