[Xmca-l] Re: The Semiotic Stance.pdf

[Greg Thompson]

​Martin,
The place where there feels to be a contradiction is in the idea that
scientific psychology has some kind of privileged location among the
ontologies. This wasn't something that you explicitly said but it seemed to
be inferred (by me!).

I guess we still have a lot of work to do in order to give non-scientific
ontologies their due. Definitely the other half of Latour's project.

And I assume that this all begs the question of the "what for" of
ontologies, i.e., what is a given ontology "for"? I assume that this
matters too.
-greg

​

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 11:39 PM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
> wrote:

> Is there a contradiction?
>
> Martin
>
> > On Jul 3, 2016, at 9:24 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> wrote:
> >
> > The ontology of scientific psychology is one of many ontologies.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >> On Jul 3, 2016, at 12:19 AM, greg.a.thompson@gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >> Martin,
> >> So, ontologies writ large can be plural, but an ontology of scientific
> psychology is singular (and contradicts at least some of the plural
> ontologies, which, for example posit things like "mind," "spirit", "God",
> etc.).
> >> Do horizons somehow account for this apparent contradiction? The
> simultaneous truth and untruth of these entities?
> >>
> >> And can you remind us of the candle in the mirror metaphor?
> >>
> >> Greg
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>> On Jul 3, 2016, at 12:02 PM, Martin John Packer <
> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I think that’s a fair comment, Larry. It must appear that I’m being
> inconsistent introducing gods after being so hard on Michael for invoking
> intelligent design. But, while I want to follow Latour (and Viveiros de
> Castro) in arguing that there are multiple ontologies, many ways of
> existing, in which case mind can be said to exist in the ontology of
> Western folk psychology, I also want to insist that the ontology of a
> scientific psychology has to be consistent and non-contradictory, which
> means it must be non-dualist. No mind in a scientific psychology (except as
> an appearance to be explained, like a candle seemingly ‘behind’ a mirror),
> and no god either.
> >>>
> >>> Martin
> >>>
> >>>> On Jul 2, 2016, at 8:51 PM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Greg,
> >>>> This shift in the relationship between (mind) and (meaning)  towards
> meaning being primordial or primary and mind arising as one particular way
> of imagining meaning seems to be a radical shift in ways of approaching or
> orienting towards (mind) as an object.
> >>>> Mind becomes one way of imaging and diagramming, and symbolizing
> (meaning potential) in other words -mind as object.
> >>>> As Martin says, this may be *fictional* but is *real* in a way
> similar to God being *real* in particular traditions.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Greg Thompson
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson