Re: EVI's Concept of the Ideal - mirrors

From: Andy Blunden (ablunden@mira.net)
Date: Sat May 15 2004 - 17:09:00 PDT


Lenin's argument in "Materialism & Empirio-criticism" (and I don't have the
book in front of me) is that the capacity to be affected by the impact of other
things/events is a universal property of matter; therefore all material systems
have the capacity to incorporate within themselves the "traces" of other things
and past events. ("traces" is an allusion to Ernst Mach)

I think this universal property of matter (basically to be interconnected and
to exhibit relative stability) can be granted and as a necessary underlying
basis for human existence.

The point is, just like with all those departments of "Behavioural Science"
that try to learn something about the human psyche by racing rats around the
laboratory. It tells us nothing about the specifically human condition that we
are interested in.

Andy

Quoting Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>:
> I think the whole issue of the meaning of reflection in that philosophical
> discussion is frought with problems, Andy. The sense in which a footprint
> reflects and a mirror reflects seem to be, in ordinary English, to be
> different, but perhaps I am following this too casually.
> mike
>
>

Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy/



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