KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 1 (Muller)

Commentary 27

( ON ADLER'S "IS INTELLECT IMMATERIAL ?" )
24 April 2002, posted 30 April 2002
by Adrian van der Meijden

EPISTOSUMMARY ?

<1>
One can summarise this paper with programmable categories. Any paradigm or theory is made up from the following ?minimal? or non-reducible set of categories, viz:

Whole part

analog digital

series parallel.

We may as well call the left side mind or reality and the right side matter as adjudicated by the sensory. So if we want to construct a *purist* or extreme theory of mind and matter it makes for mind everything connected and for matter everything quantifiable. We can make up mixed theories or philosophies by picking any one from the three pairs. OF that one of the three elected is made closed as Newton did for space, Einstein did for time and Quantum findings now show neither closure to be achievable. The requisite assumptions we all know already. This leaves two categories to play dualistic with for any interaction modelled by way of being fixed and mutable or noun and verb or static and dynamic. And we'd all rather be a hammer than a nail. Our Egyptoid socio-hieratic setup permits only some of us to play 3rd person hammer.

<2>
As a permuted series a first is 3! = 6 -> 6! = 720 and 720! = beyond my calculator so above 10 x ^99 zeroes. So in three steps from an initial episteme via theory into a hypothesis or working rule we're already beyond what any intellect can encompass at once and together. This leads into the Bohr-Einstein debate about whether god plays dice or not. That leads into the theological quibble about whether god knows it all at once and together as a whole versus only by whatever is needed to DO something. To which the comment is that of the Zen Abbot: "Good question, Would you like some tea?", tea being thought of as a pacifier. Personally I like the Alice race solution: everybody gets a prize. We can further play games with a choice of logic's 'and' versus 'or', not to ignore all the possible 'if's.

<3>
This rather nicely accounts for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd person melee. We are all ?uniquely? different. We have contrived a restricted 3rd person socio-logical means of representation and communication which permits 2^nd person theoretical chaos. None of us will ever agree to 3rd person, socially imposed, world models of any monist type as that seems reserved unto the private and subjective. About which we can raise the query whether that is a language contrived conundrum or a real one and have another cup of tea. All which leaves us with the linguistically constrained versus '?'. Perhaps one might also recommend Ortega y Gasset "On the Barbarism of Specialisation"?

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Adrian vdMeijden