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

[Andy Blunden]

Annalisa, making a distinction between matter and movement is 
problematic and was not my intention. The atoms which make up your body 
will be dancing somewhere else 7 years from now. In any case I meant 
"matter" in the philosophical sense, as that which exists independently 
of and outside of consciousness. So pressure waves in air are equally 
material as scratches on paper, characters on your screen or 
inscriptions on stone tablets.
Because we are inclined to say that the little packet of sound you get 
when you say "ger" is 'the same word' as what is written a couple of 
inches back on this line, we easily forget that no word exists other 
than in one or another of its material instantiations. But we don't talk 
by mental telepathy, but only by placing material objects within the 
perceptual fields of another person, for them to interpret. It's when 
there is some breakdown in communication that you hyave to go back and 
look at the actual, material form you gave to your words.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


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
>
>