[Xmca-l] Re: Noumenal and Phenomenal

[Glassman, Michael]

Yes I worried about using the example of intelligent design for this reason, we would get bogged down in the whole God thing rather than the idea that there is a separate mind manipulating and controlling our activity or consciousness or personality, or whatever you might want to call this constant that we carry around with us.  I'm not making an argument for intelligent design - and I actually think you know that.  I am saying that our conception of development has similarities to the conception of intelligent design, in that there is a mind, an internal, constant force which is manipulating activity.  One of the reasons the early Pragmatists were no against dualism is because of the destructive tendencies of the idea that God has a plan.  If we can't get there then I would like to withdraw my example because it just becomes a distraction.

Michael
________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Martin John Packer [mpacker@uniandes.edu.co]
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 11:33 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Noumenal and Phenomenal

I am not following your argument, Michael. You suggest that the explanation of individual development is somehow parallel to the issue of Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is the claim that the order we see in the universe must have been designed, and design requires intelligence, therefore a god must exist. Presumably you find that argument convincing, or you would not suggest the parallel. I, however, do not find it a convincing argument: order in the universe emerges and evolves over time.

In the same way, the order in human activity emerges and evolves over time. You seem to be suggesting that explaining order in individual psychological development must require something that remains "constant as the circumstances of activity constantly change.” Well, children are born into a highly structured social context. And LSV *does* posit something else that is, or becomes, relatively “constant” in human psychological development: he calls it personality. Not mind.


Martin