[Xmca-l] Re: Fate, Luck and Chance

[Martin John Packer]

Samuel,

There seems to me to be a "not" missing somewhere in your last sentence. Some human cultures are not dualist in their ontological assumptions: it's certainly not the case that dualism is so obvious that it's universal. It is the person who argues that meaning is not material who has a serious ontological problem, because they have to explain how a non-material meaning gets somehow connected to, or associated with, a material sound. All attempts to come up with that explanation (in linguistics, in philosophy, in psychology) have so far failed.

Seriously folks, if you don't believe that a word is material, please read Thinking and Speech.

If you don't believe that dualism is a problem, please read The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation.

Martin

On Nov 23, 2014, at 7:13 PM, Samuel Paul Louis Veissière, Dr <samuel.veissiere@mcgill.ca> wrote:

> Dan Sperber dismisses the question by saying that "public representations" are sound waves and light patterns, and are as such material phenomena. That's a philosophical copout. Meaning (what we embed sound waves with) is not material, unless one goes full-on neuro-reductionist. If all human cultures are dualistic, or have found ways to talk about or try to solve the problem of dualism, it may be because, as far as humans are concerned, we have a pretty serious ontological problem. No?
> 
> On Nov 23, 2014 7:06 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, Analisa --
> 
> It they're not material, what are they?
> 
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> 
> On Nov 23, 2014, at 3:25 PM, Annalisa Aguilar wrote:
> 
>> Andy,
>> 
>> Please explain how words are material. Do you mean this literally or metaphorically?
>> 
>> I am prone to accept that mind is material, but of a different order than Grandma's apple pie, mountains or a vinyl record. I can't quite see how words are material. Sounds traveling through space are movements of material (air), so that to me would be like saying dancing is material, if dancing is material, then what is the body who dances? And how is the body different from the dance?
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> Annalisa
> 
>