SCIENCE!
I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but I'd rather not (c'mon, you guys, I have a Chinese midterm, give me a break :P), so instead, I'm going to write about evolution. One of my classes this year is an upper-division biology class, Experimental Ecology & Evolution (E3, for short, and I love it more than any class ever), which is giving me uppity ( Read more... )
You apparently had no problem conceiving of your preferred framework (free will, et cetera). By your own logic, if you could conceive of it, you ought to be able to communicate it in a way that shows it to be valid, which would preclude invoking concepts that are completely incompatible with the basic premise. But, even though you can't, you're basically just asking me to take your word for it because it's way over my language-enslaved head. I don't see any compelling reason for me to accept or agree with this.
Let me also put straight, this is not a matter of philosophy versus science. There is plenty of philosophy that endorses science. There is no such thing as 'my' logic. There is logic. Logic doesn't belong to anyone. Logic, however, is as flawed as anything. It's flaw as I was arguing lies in language. I'm not asking you to take my word for it, I'm saying that's the way it is, whether or not you are a materialist, religious, or an existential philosopher. I was not at all saying "if you can conceive of it, you ought to be able to communicate it in a way that shows it to be valid". You're putting words in my mouth. I said much the opposite, actually. I said that the way we communicate things is the way we conceive of things. If you had no language, you would not be able to think. And when I say language, Rachel, I mean language in a broad sense: that is, one thing is used to express another thing. Attaching meaning to perception. Language in its primitive form could just be images. One can think in images. Prior to language, a baby is basically just a ball of Desire. When the baby enters the world, it enters a world of pre-established meanings into which it is indoctrinated. Yes, you can make up new words and languages, Rachel. You almost have the idea grasped, but you're missing just one little bit, which is my fault, because I didn't talk about it. Basically, creation of new symbols with which to express oneself is just a broadening of the cage. You can renovate the prison of words, but there will always be an infinite number of meanings that are, by virtue of being inexpressible, inconceivable. Here we could also get into how language functions in relation to the unconscious mind, which further complicates matters, as we also repress meaning, but that would require way too much work on my part and I have things to do and I think it would be better if you just took some Lacan out of the library.
And as for new ideas, I think Shakespeare once said something about there being no such thing as a new idea, but I don't want to get into that. We'll just leave it at another renovation to the prison. I'd also like to say, this is not incompatible with Science. It might benefit you to learn more about it.
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Oh, please, a quote from maybe-Shakespeare does not constitute evidence, and if you want to make that exceedingly foolish claim, I would greatly appreciate it if you would deign to support it.
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Under an ontology of "Being is." an idea is a different thing entirely. This is where Hegel's dialectic comes in, but that would take forever to explain. I'll leave it at this: if effect is already latent in being, ideas are already latent in Being, so one does not create new ideas, one brings out ideas that were always there just not consciously conceived.
I would further like to note that even if I had the quote, you would claim that it does not constitute evidence, correct me if I am wrong. But you see, there is the self-fulfilling prophecy of science. Only a scientific argument constitutes evidence. What does it matter that some man once said something? According to science, that means squat. (And in my opinion, Shakespeare has contributed more to human understanding than Science ever could, and he was only one little man.)
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Well, yes, because people can say things that are dead wrong. But let's take an actual Shakespeare quote - Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, for instance. Someone who has never had occasion to contemplate suicide, nor known anyone driven to that level of despair, will not understand it. But to everyone else, it resonates, because it accords with their own observations about life.
So, Shakespeare's statements are not evidence for their own truth (and really, how could they be?); rather, the truth of his statements is a conclusion that the reader draws, using his/her observations as the evidence. Just because a statement isn't considered evidence for the purposes of a particular type of discussion, it doesn't follow that it is meaningless.
At any rate, if the original idea does not accord with Rachel's observations, I don't quite understand how a quote that essentially restates what you're trying to argue ought to be taken as proof - however brilliantly it may phrase the idea.
(If Shakespeare expressed an idea similar to what you were originally saying [which is entirely possible], I cannot think of it off the top of my head. However, you might have been thinking of Ecclesiastes 1:9, "There is nothing new under the sun." And given that Ecclesiastes is basically Solomon drowning in his own angst, if I were you, I would hesitate to put forth any line from its early chapters as a truth about human existence, or evidence thereof.)
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Did you perhaps mean the quote: "there is nothing new under the sun"?
Cause it's not Shakespeare. It's from the Bible.
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