Sun, 9 Jul 2006

On Dennett's 'Freedom Evolves'

JUD EVANS
My personal view is that the abstractions 'determinism' and the 'abstraction' free-will' are extremely useful in that whilst they themselves are abstractions, they are vital tools in the fight against obscurantism and mentalism and the reification of the grammatical descriptions of the manner in which people and things exist - into real things - in other words in the fight against realism. I have never been particularly influenced by appeals to authority and I have no philosophical heroes so whilst I take cognisance of what Rorty says, I always bear in mind, that particularly in matters of ontology, opinions tend to be very subjective no matter how much scholarship has been invested in arriving at certain conclusions.

GARY. C. MOORE:
No problem but they are useful 'moral' tools and 'political' tools and rhetorical tools getting very demonstrable objective results.

JUD EVANS:
Yes, Gary, but the fact that they are useful 'moral' tools and 'political' tools and rhetorical tools getting very demonstrable objective results. It does not mean that they exist - it just means that the moralists, politicians and rhetoricians that find these communicative tools useful exist.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Jud, the reason I opined that both terms [determinism and free-will] are not useful abstractions is because they offer up a false dichotomy that often results in useless arguments in which neither side can win. One can grant determinism or free-will, and life goes on the same way.

GARY. C. MOORE:
OK, you know I know . . . the beginning of a 'esse est percipi' loop? . . . everything exists in my brain. But I have really not explored literally starting from their as Wittgenstein would desire. What are the facts of the matter. First I exist. Then there is Jud Evans the biggest non-I entity in my universe. But this is personal, whatever that means, and at least as feeling denotes a strong demarcation line between where I am and amorphous categories like 'politicians'. But, in the bare bones of the matter, a politician is just a man, powerful only because others let him be powerful, sustained in immanence by the attention of multitudinous ciphers. But we are all alike, that is, ontologically, we are ridiculously similar, no, exactly alike with trivial differences. I could strap fifty pounds of plastique explosive around me with a fail safe trigger, which if I release by being shot the explosive goes off, thrust myself into a political meeting – they cannot stop me without setting off the bomb – and suddenly I can make political dictates. Change the covering methodology but preserving the same motives, you have on your hands an utterly ruthless ace number one politician going all the way to the top or – going for a big fall. Though the second is far more intelligent than the first, they are still the same and still, guess what, basically a simple human being.

     As the early Wittgenstein would say, once you know one human being, you know all human being if you simply know what the basic building blocks of a human being are. And I would say we are all physiologically, and therefore – according to our Eliminative materialist tenants this MUST be true – psychologically, basically the same with only historical accidents, most of which are trivial, and chemical imbalances making a difference, and almost always for the worst [big, vague word]. Why do we really need differences amongst each other? There are already more differences than we want to account for or can deal with, that is, in ordinary real life, not fantasy-land. The difference in physiological abilities is minuscule. What the Eliminatists said about 'motivation' as something existing in the frontal lobes all on its own, truly determinativist, no free choice conceivable in any rational way, and yet still there is this . . . motivation . . . not 'drive' – that implies being driven – we are the 'drivers', whatever that means, but whimsy, free will, disconnection from material cause-and-effect is not even intellectually conceivable: No fantasy land – ever, under any conditions. But there is 'motivation' – to fell pain? – strange as it seems that seems to be the facts of the matter.

     One can fantasize all sorts of reasons to explain it away after the fact. But the fact is, Pain is, in some sense, DESIRED. No one wants it, but it is still desired. One takes away the desire, one takes away – not the pain – but the caring for the pain, the attending to the pain, the culturing and feeding of the pain. The point of all this is, if we are literal Eliminative materialists, real materialist man is a far, far stranger thing than 'spiritual' man, than soul man. Why? Because with spiritual man, all the explanations are right at hand in contradictory abundance, with people INSISTING on giving them to you for . . . 'free'. But with material man, it just is. It is simple, but unexplained.

     There it is. That is the facts of the matter. The primary moving force in man in all of its multitude of versions in all of human history is a twisted desire – or lack of it – no one really understands. But it is objectively, scientifically, physiologically demonstrable. Remember Orwell's 1984? The conditioning-response of human fears, and then the political commissar steps in and saves the victim from his greatest terror and becomes his saviour? He is just a politician and a politician is just a man using a man-made tool any man can use. And this all only exists in my brain. That poor sod's greatest fear was rats. My greatest fear is going to work Monday morning. Very trivial, is it not? Very ordinary. Very common. Human beings are simple because they are basically the same. Give him the right tool, teach him how to use it, and he can conquer the world – out of fear, if nothing else. So be more respectful of common, universal human nature.

JUD EVANS:
It is usually opponents of determinism who muddy the waters by introducing the question of 'predictability' which has nothing at all to do with determinism.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Actually you are perfectly correct because, though being 'deterministic' is an excellent methodology to achieve predictable results, 'determinism' per se is a useless and resultless metaphysics bordering on mysticism, something very hard to avoid as Wittgenstein demonstrated at the end of the TRACTATUS, and we are all, including me, guilty of that is, useless until it creates a deterministic methodology of thought that can achieve predictable results, that is, materially, objectively verify tangible results. That is why to propose the theses of Eliminativism one must go through common sense and folk psychology, discerning their contradictions, and then trying to cast off their garments to get at the real heart of the matter.

JUD EVANS:
It is not the intention of determinists to offer deterministic analysis as a methodological tool for making predictions in the way that astrologers, money-in-the-slot fortune telling machines or the bible 'prophets' do/did.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Johannes Kepler made his main living being an astrologer. His mother was also a witch who had been burned at the stake. A good astrologer has to have a superb grasp of mathematics. No, it is not a real science, but it does have all the trappings of science, that is, the real tools of science. And science is totally dependent on getting its bread and butter by accurately predicting verifiable results every single time, or close enough to it in tight spaces. Johannes Kepler told the Field Marshall Wallenstein he would be assassinated three days hence, or something like that. The unfortunate man disregarded his mathematical conclusions and was stabbed to death at the predicted moment. So, what do I conclude? Why, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

JUD EVANS
Determinism simply points out that humans have no ontological [emperor's] clothes, that we are no different deterministically from any other causal object in the cosmos. It is in a sense a deflationary, take-down-peg-or-two philosophy which takes the puff out of humans who think they are something special. It is particularly corrosive of transcendentalism - particularly the more lunatic fringe versions such as Heideggerianism, where the individual is seen as having the 'will' to change the way he exists by waving some individualistic metaphysical magic twinkle-stick as per Nietzsche, who, [unknown to himself] was [like many of us] actually under the malign/benign deterministic influence of the twinkle-stick located in his trousers. ;-)

GARY. C. MOORE:
Actually, you can have the 'will' and even the 'will to change'. But anyone who has gone through the experience, especially Nietzsche, would NEVER say it was a matter of free will, of choice, but of terror and horror and of being forced beyond what one could normally accept as he himself described it – do not ask me where, that is too many years ago. But it is much more like being seized, a seizure or a stroke where you no longer know yourself, not pleasant or freely chosen at all or even desired – but desire is strange in material man is it not? – and nowhere near like waving a magic wand. All in all, if it had been a matter of free will, of choice, I am sure he would have said, like any sensible rational person, 'No thank you! I'll pass on that' But he was determined, bound by things he had no choice over as he knew himself, some of which are objectively verifiable, some of which can be easily deduced from his impossible personal situation. [Were his migraine headaches an escape from his problems or caused by them?] This, actually, was what got us together at the old Heidegger site. I said, Yes, one can choose to be insane rather than live in an intolerable situation [Actually, I think he planned 'to die at the right time' that is, suicide, but he waited too long.]. R. D. Laing said the exact same thing about schizophrenic children in schizoid families. 'The family that has sex together, stays together,' and other nasty variations that use to be utterly inescapable for a child, and is little different now, just better hid. My thesis was, insanity could be an escape. I really had little to go on, only Laing and my personal experience with schizophrenics who gave me – still do – the overpowering sense they know much more about how the world really is than I did – or do now.

JUD EVANS:
Regarding the coin-flip, one of the main concatenational components of the heads or tails outcome is the fact that some human was deterministically influenced enough to toss the coin in the first place, for without succumbing to this rather romantic societal convention of 'happy-go-lucky choice making' [and I do not know whether coin-tossing is a universal practice of is restricted to the West?] there would be no 'decisional outcome' at all.

RICHARD SANSOM:
What about the case wherein one builds a machine that tosses up coins using a randomized process, with no *human* intervention, save that of building the machine. In this case the vagaries of the mechanism, the minutae of the environmental effects, etc contain the most salient features of the concatenations involved. Of course the innumerable causes that led up to building the machine can come into play, but this is why I offered the idea of distal versus proximal causal factors.

JUD EVANS:
It is true that some catenulate antecedal effects are more difficult to identify than others. A catenulate 'line in the sand' has to be drawn somewhere. I strike the cue-ball with my billiard-cue and it strikes a red. The red drops in the pocket and the cue-ball drifts over and comes to rest right by a brown cigarette-burn on the green baize. We are able to provide a catenulate account of the events which explain the position of the red ball in the top left-hand pocket and the cue ball on the burn-mark. I would take this as an example of your proximal category of deterministically explainable events.

      I think that your distal and proximal terms are very useful and I will use them from now on. Regarding the mechanical coin-tosser. For me the proximal causal factor would be [as you suggest] would be that of building, installing and operating the machine. Distal factors would include the prior factors which led up to you wishing to build and actually building the machine. To compute any further back into your history, infancy, reasons for your mechanical aptitude, education and the causal events which led up to your building, installing and operating of the machine are far too distal subjects in which to get involved.

      If your name was Marconi and it was not a coin-tossing machine but RADIO that you built for the first time, then there would be biographers who would be interesting in finding out all that they could about your early distal development and the deterministic influences to which you were exposed. Your 'distal' and proximal' terms provide a good method of addressing such aspects of determinism.

GARY. C. MOORE:
I-CHING can be done with coin tossing.

JUD EVANS:
I know the Chinese have a love of gambling. ;-)

GARY. C. MOORE
I have their coins and some of their gambling tokens, exotic works of tiny art. RICHARD SANSOM: In chapter ten, in the section titled Human Freedom is Fragile, Dennett says:

'Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found only in our species. Human freedom is real, as real as language, music and money.'

JUD EVANS:
I am flabbergasted by Dennett's statement. In my ontology [my criteria of deciding what actually exists- and and what does not] this means that he is an out and out Platonist. If he believes that 'Human freedom' is not an illusion - that it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions, and found only in our species, then he must also believe [it follows logically] that any state or process known through the senses [rather than by intuition or reasoning] is also an objective phenomenon. As to Dennett believing that 'human freedom' is a 'biological condition' - well I need to think this through more deeply, for does this mean that believing that the moon is made of green cheese is also a biological condition?

RICHARD SANSOM:
Jud, you are absolutely correct. All organisms exist in a *biological condition' By Dennett's reasoning, one who lacks freedom [e. g. a prisoner] lacks it via his biological condition as well!

GARY. C. MOORE:
Would not they have to be since they are occurring in the human brain through chemical reactions?

JUD EVANS:
Yes, you are right Gary it is a profound question which is part of my own enquiry regarding 'Action and Inaction,' or more explicitly 'Action versus Entity' - is there a difference? For me the 'activity' of thinking about human freedom or that the moon is made of green cheese does not exist. The neurons that undergo the electrochemical changes which lay down certain memorial pathways certainly exist but that which the patterns or pathways records does not exist. The green light that signals a driver to GO! exists - but the idea of GO! does not exist in the traffic light. The meaty neurone patterns of the ideating human communicational traffic light exist in the configuration of the fleshy neural network, but the 'idea' itself [just like the 'GO! of the traffic light' does not itself exist. Only the meat exists. 'Reactions don't exist - only that which reacts exists. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO ELIMINATIVIST PHILOSOPHY TO UNDERSTAND THIS PHYSICAL FACT.

GARY. C. MOORE:
On this point, we have NEVER had a disagreement . . . I think. Maybe. When you get old things get fuzzy. And you always remember clearly the strangest things . . . that you would rather be forgotten.

JUD EVANS
I am tempted to accept that ANYTHING concerned with the physiological or neurological condition of all and every human is biological and that ANYTHING that concerned with the physiological or neurological condition of all and every rat, centipede and elephant reflects the distinct biological condition of all and every rat, centipede and elephant. So what? For me 'states' and 'processes' do not exist - what exists are the objects themselves.

GARY. C. MOORE:
What about objectively perceived action?

JUD EVANS
There is none. Only the objectively perceived object exists.

GARY. C. MOORE:
But it can be measured in numerous different ways, whole books of physics are filled with mathematical formulae predicting the outcomes of the energies of motion, electrons only 'are' motion, energy, no mass, no object. But you mean something altogether different, do you not?

GARY. C. MOORE:
Photography of measured motion such as the studies in England at the turn of the twentieth century?

JUD EVANS:
Simply a photograph of a moving object frozen on a photographic plate. It is photography of a measured object not of a measured motion - motion cannot be measured because it does not exist to be measured. Only the moving object can be measured in relation to another object/objects.

GARY. C. MOORE:
But different moving objects can have very different forces applied to them to make the same object act in a radically different but scientifically predictable fashion. So, is there not in that something MORE to the moving object than the object? But, actually, yes, you are correct because you have to be. Identity can only be of objects, of picturable objects. But still the moving object is different from the same object standing still? Its motion is detectable, you are right, only against a context of other objects, and, yes, speed and force, though variable, still only exist in relation to measurement within the 'logical space' of other objects. So, yes, I agree, you are right. There certainly is no motion 'in-itself'. And the same is true for non-moving objects, still objects. They are 'measured' or rather 'contextualized' in logical space as measured in relation to other objects. There is a picture in the brain that sets 'the state of affairs', that tells you the facts of the matter. That is not completely correct, there are problems with that, but it will do for now to set up the basics.

And what about getting up out of your chair or sitting down? Obviously there are deterministic factors totally creating the situation, but at what point do they start and at what point do they stop?

JUD EVANS
At the point that the deterministically arrived at point is reached where the fullness in my bladder becomes uncomfortable.

GARY. C. MOORE:
And, again ' Mereological nihilism', break those motions up and you have, demonstrably, objectively, a number of parts that do not add up to the 'whole' I know- of the complete experienced motion. Now, is saying Jud just sat in a chair a nominalistic statement? I do not know. You can probably be the better judge. My mind wears out quickly these days.

JUD EVANS
Mereology deals with what constitutes an object [and other questions of entiatic boundaries, etc.] For the purposes of discussing Jud getting up from his chair we need to agree on what constitutes the mereological object 'Jud'. To refer to me as 'Jud' is nominologically acceptable. If you decided to refer to me as 'The Englishman who lives in North Lancashire and is a member of this list' then that would also be nominalistically acceptable.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Now, as to 'states' and 'processes' used as if they were stable, presentable OBJECTS, I have to agree with you entirely. They are not even good as abstractive tools as 'deterministic' certainly is, that is, 'a well designed thought process' - my god, I just said it.

JUD EVANS:
It is VERY difficult to avoid the historical lingual garbage that we have been bequeathed by the ontological dunderheads of yesteryear - I employ the crap too - all the while - it is like drinking - it is very hard to give it up. ;-)

GARY. C. MOORE:
But it is so fascinating when you find the neurological way around it. Maybe common sense and folk psychology are just like religion in that they are a kind of escape from things that make us very uncomfortable, but not necessarily because we know the real truth, but because the material facts of the matter are completely strange. Once again pain. Pain is intolerable only because we care about it. If we do not care about it – because of morphine – it is no longer fearful EVEN THOUGH IT IS STILL FULLY THERE. You do not care. That is literally how anaesthetists describe it. You feel all the pain but you just do not care. Now, remember the religious people at the turn of the twentieth century who said anaesthesia goes against the will of God, that God made your body so you would feel pain – and therefore I guess the pains of Hell – no anaesthetic relief in Hell - so you need to fear it here on earth and learn the will of God?

     HOW MUCH of our fear of pain, then, is possibly inherited from the inherent theology in folk psychology? I had not thought of that till now, but I think it might be possible for a good determinist, going back over thousands of years of theological teachings, to find a thread. For think upon this: Animals other than man can produce massive amounts of endorphins to be able to cope with pain. That is why a horse with a broken leg keeps trying to get up again and has to be 'put down'. ONLY man cannot. If you have a broken leg, there is no way you are going to try to walk around with it. But archeologists have studied prehistoric human remains and have found numerous major fractures in their bones, especially Neanderthals. In their 'logical space', lying around all day with a broken leg with animals prowling around wanting to eat you would definitely be a counter-survival factor. There is no reason to think they could not think of setting splints to a broken leg. But there is reason to think they made themselves mobile and defensible which means getting up on a broken leg. Just like the horse is instinctively trying to do. If you lie down you are dead. So, what do you think?

Anyway. But, as motion, 'something' can be objective and even repeatably demonstrable and still not be an object.

JUD EVANS:
An example please?

RICHARD SANSOM:
Example? Move your hand – repeatably demonstrable.

JUD EVANS:
But this just demonstrates/shows a moving hand - not movement. Movement cannot be demonstrated 'apart' or 'separate' from that which moves, because it is that which moves as a moving entity that exists and not 'movement' per se. In my opinion it is a scientific and ontological mistake, which we have inherited from the primitive and corrupt ontologies of religion and transcendentalism, to conceive of any abstraction which describes, infers or suggests that any feature of the manner in which an object exists can be seen, touched, smelt, tasted, heard or otherwise detected by any part of our sensorial system.  There is no Cartesian style 'duality' or Heideggerian 'ontological difference.' The predatory hawk sees the moving fielders - not its 'movement.'  We touch the quivering lip - not its 'quivering.'
We smell the rotten egg - not its 'rottenness.' We taste the sour milk - not its 'sourness.'


GARY. C. MOORE:
Amended above. Gary: And I really do not see that much difference between us and centipedes,

JUD EVANS:
I have enough discomfort with the two feet I have got [the only manifestation of old age that bothers me - my feet ache after too much walking - specially around the shops with my wife] God help old centipedes!

GARY. C. MOORE:
and I do not agree with Dennett, at least for the short passages I have read of him. THERE IS NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL, THAT IS EXCLUSIVELY HUMAN THAT SOME OTHER ANIMAL CANNOT POSSESS!

JUD EVANS:
Given enough developmental time and deterministic imperatives - I agree with you Gary.

RICHARD SANSOM:
First point: I assume that Gary means over a great span of time some other organism could evolve into something like humans. Since the odds have been calculated for the emergence of our own species – somewhere in the trillions of trillions to one against, I seriously doubt it. Second: Even among us humans, our differences at the biological level are immense. More on this if you wish….

GARY. C. MOORE:
OK! There we go! I like that! 'Determinstic imperative'! Just like motivation without choice in the frontal lobes. Just like the horse getting up on a broken leg! I like that very much! 'Determinstic imperative'. Sorry if I missed it before but the context has changed obviously.

JUD EVANS:
'States' and 'processes' are abstractions we employ to attempt describe the indescribable - the changes rendered to the entiatic end-links [the objects on a conveyor-belt for example] which represent the sum of all the concatenational influences [or if you like 'imperatives'] which have preceded them. In this paragraph I have employed the words: 'changes' and 'concatenational influences' for purposes of communicating what I want to say, but that is not to suggest for one moment that I am attempting to get off the ontological hook by merely substituting one abstraction for another. The fact that I am deterministically forced to employ passe communicational conventions which are left over from our philosophical and historical unenlightenment does not mean that I am suggesting that such things exist. Plainly for me, and folk like me, only 'that which changes' and 'that which is subject to concatenational influences or imperatives' exists.

GARY. C. MOORE:
This is the same point I am making and the articles on Eliminativism I made a pastiche from. Common sense and folk psychology are the beginning of the scientific approach, but they are certainly something we need to grow out of, however difficult it may be.  And it is difficult!

JUD EVANS:
For a man of your intellect it presents no problem, but sadly for the majority - it would need to be taught in primary school and reinforced in their higher education. Once their little brains have been abused with religion there is little hope for them.


RICHARD SANSOM:
Here we have, in a nutshell, the key thesis of the book: freedom reified.

JUD EVANS:
Spot on!

GARY. C. MOORE:
But is not what RICHARD SANSOM is saying completely contradictory to what you are saying? Or maybe I am confused. Let us see.

JUD EVANS:
No - don't think so. I guess Richard's position concerns the 'use' or 'applicability' of determinism rather than the veracity of concatenation itself. I will continue to try to convince RICHARD SANSOM of the value of determinism as an intellectual weapon to fight what he hates most about the forces of evil which have usurped the American Republic.

RICHARD SANSOM:
I too am a determinist, but I maintain the belief that I can ask that my eggs be scrambled – then change my mind a hundred times if I choose, and I could not give a whit that this entire process is a deterministic one. That fact is truly irrelevant. And regarding fighting the idiocy of our current administration and congress and judicial system [all three!!] the *weapon* I must use is my vote and my letters to the editor – I would march if Northern California was not a liberal bastion.

By equating freedom with things like language, music and money, three entirely different aspects of our species, Dennett shows his colours as an anti-nominalist. If that carries any currency with anyone it does with me! Human freedom, as opposed to that of other sentient entities, is apparently different. Of course it is different since it has been invented by humans to BE different. Dennett would never claim that the there is freedom in the heliotropic behavior of plants, or freedom of the robin to choose one bit of weed over another in nest building or the freedom of the beaver to selective one branch over another in his dam building. Why not? Simply because they are not human!

JUD EVANS
Beautifully analysed!

GARY. C. MOORE:
O. K., I can see a different slant on this now. But I think there is an equivocation involved. On the one hand we are talking about extremely broad abstractions, ' language, music and money' as though they were authentically nominalistic [Why?] and 'freedom' as if it were a non-nominalistic abstraction.

JUD EVANS:
I don't quite understand what you mean by 'non-nominalistic abstraction here Gary? Usually [or should I be more specific and say 'personally' all abstraction is equally non-existent, though much of it is useful for speed of communication.

GARY. C. MOORE:
It relates to something I have slightly touched on but never directly head on. Abstractions have to have chemical/physical correspondents in the brain, if nothing else simply to remember them. But they have emotional reactions connected to them also, 'connotations' and what not, all calling out chemical responses however seemingly neutral they may seem intellectually – until challenged! Each of the three words have a Pavlovian type emotional response that reinforces their 'validity', that supports the certainty of their evaluation, that they are 'important' though for very different reasons – supposedly. But in Eliminative materialism that 'difference' would no longer be altogether that great would it? There is a material reality linked to the words no matter how else they may be regarded.

We can hear a word spoken but that is not an objective demonstration of 'language'. However, as to a word written, that is even much more elusive [see ' Mereological nihilism' from the Eliminativist pastiche pasted below].

JUD EVANS
I have written much elsewhere on the fact that 'language' doesn't exist and that only communicative humans exist.

RICHARD SANSOM:
But of course the above sentence [a bit of written language] does not exist – right?

JUD EVANS:
Ontologically speaking   [not street-language-wise] - NO - it does not exist as 'language.' The pixilated symbols on this page do not exist as 'language' They exist as meaningless arrangements of pixels,  just as the print in a book is a meaningless jumble of ink-marks or a road-sign pointing to Los Angeles is not language. The 'meaning' and conversion into language takes place in the brain of the reader - your brain as you read these arrangements of marks on the screen that we call 'letters' and 'words.'

It is only when the marks are read and interpreted by the reader who converts the symbols into mutually understood significations [semantically agreed upon antecedally by members of his language-group] that he exists in an existential modality of understanding.  This mode of understanding the generation and communication of written and oral/aural symbols can be called 'language-use.'

In other words, 'language' is about the way the lingually equipped human exists - and NOT the way the book or road-sign exist. Road signs, computer-screens and books simply  exist with pixilations, dried ink-marks or luminous paint upon their surfaces -   it is human beings who exist as language-using linguistic entities.


GARY. C. MOORE:
That is already presupposed in all cases. After all, it is all in my brain. Gary: We can hear an identifiably musical tone but that is not an objective demonstration of the existence of music. We can see and feel and even smell a dollar bill but that is no objective demonstration of the existence of money UNTIL WE USE IT AS AN EXCHANGE VALUE.

JUD EVANS:
I agree, but even when use it as an 'exchange value' i. e., when we change the word from 'money' to 'exchange value' IT STILL DOESN'T EXIST. What exists are HUMANS who consider it to be valuable. A Martian stumbling upon the contents of the Royal Mint on a deserted planet Earth would probably melt it all down and make tubular furniture out of it.

GARY. C. MOORE:
I would say we are saying the same thing or my aching neck is making me agreeable. The only reason we can 'use' money is because other people BELIEVE [folk psychology] that it has value.

JUD EVANS
Absolutely correct. For 'money' or 'credit cards' to work needs societal agreement. If ONLY you and I deemed milk-bottle tops to be valuable and negotiable it wouldn't mean that the guy behind the counter at McDonalds would accept them in exchange for a veggieburger.

GARY. C. MOORE:
That is why Adam Smith's and Marx's designation that value is created by the necessary amount of labor used to produce it is so neat! But it takes very little labor to produce paper and print on it. Whereas gold takes a tremendous amount of labor to get a tiny part of it. After the Allies had occupied Germany, Reichmarks were still being used as exchange values even though the Reichsbank, the Reichstag, and the Reichsfuhrer were all dead and gone. They BELIEVED in their dollars. This is not nominalist, though it is useful.

JUD EVANS We all attach personal meanings to things - but for money, Reichmarks, language, mathematics, music, postage, time, etc., to works needs mutual agreement as to the value of coins, words, numbers, notes, stamps, positions of hands on clocks, etc. Gary: As to 'freedom', we all 'believe' in freedom, Jud included,

       True - I understand what is signalled by the generality of the term 'Freedom, ' but I reserve my judgement of the 'value' or 'coinage' of the term until when I visit a community where 'freedom' is claimed to be in operation. 'Freedom' can mean a thousand different things depending upon context.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Exactly. And there is a tremendous chemical rush involved in many situational uses of the word that can change everything, but never in the way people want it to because choices are made that we claim responsibility for (note the phrasing) whether we call them 'moral' or not, because we can vote in the town hall meeting, because we can join demonstrations and hold up placards, because we can refuse to buy 'Made in China' toys. These is objective facts though I would surely hesitate to call it nominalistic - rather just pragmatic.

JUD EVANS
If I am honest with myself I vote Labour as a result of my upbringing. Nothing deterministically has caused me to change my opinion that it [the Labour Party] constitutes the lesser of all evils.

GARY. C.MOORE:
I do not vote – unless the Socialist Worker's Party is on the ballot. Texas politicians are the most crooked in the world. Too much oil money. Speaking, hearing, and using are demonstrably objective acts we can constantly repeat and 'usually' get similar results though not always.

JUD EVANS:
I do not comprehend the term 'objective acts' could you please explain what you mean by this please? Perhaps you mean 'acting towards a goal intended to be attained and which is believed to be attainable? Intentional modes of existing? I do not believe such 'acts' are possible. For me all modes of existing are deterministically explainable and can be rendered catenulately accountable.

A melody can be stopped mid phrase and it ceases to be 'music' in any rational sense. And it is purely repeatability that gives them 'value' or 'usefulness', that is, giving someone want they want, i. e., a pleasant tune.

JUD EVANS
The conventions of musical arrangement and euphony are dependent upon the auditory sensation of the human group involved and the acceptance of certain rhythms, cadence, metre, repetition, rhythm, syncopation, beat, etc.'. Some theories attribute these human tastes to the heartbeat in the womb, birdsong, and the whistle of the wind, the sound of running water, etc. Once music departs from these norms it is often regarded as 'Just a cacophony of sound' or utter rubbish', etc. Often what is at first described as trash becomes accepted as the ear becomes attuned to new configurations of sound.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Only to a degree. There are fairly clear limits. In playing chords on a piano, purely a technical exercise, you can feel the responses of 'expectation', even 'anxiety' attainment' and 'resolve'. I was very surprised to find this happening with my own hands. I was just wanting to hear what they sounded like, that is all. But the emotional response is strong – and very distinct with each chord, C major scale. And when that useful value ceases to be repeated ) as when the Reichmark ceased eventually to be acceptable CURRENCY) it is just as objectively demonstrable to be useless, that is, no longer carrying a repeatable result with it. JUD EVANS True. Gary: The material facts are nominalist.

JUD EVANS:
For me 'facts' are no objects and do not exist.
Want an example?

(1) The Eiffel Tower is an object that exists.

(2) The 'fact' that The Eiffel Tower is an object that exists does not exist.

With (2) what exists are humans who believe either that 'the 'fact' that The Eiffel Tower is an object that exists does not exist,' or 'the 'fact' that The Eiffel Tower is an object that exists does exist.'

GARY. C. MOORE:
Bad usage on my part. A fact is objects in context, situation, logical space. 'The Eiffel Tower is in Paris.' is a situational statement and therefore, to varying degrees, a fact. One who reads about it in an encyclopaedia has no reason to doubt the fact, but it is more factual to me because I saw it from Orly Airport. Again, as you say, it is measured, even though still, in place, by the objects around it, me included.

The word attached to the object in hand or in a picture is nominalist.

JUD EVANS:
I prefer: to say 'the word attached to the object in hand or in a picture is a nominalisation.' A nominalist is a person who holds to the doctrine that the various objects labelled by the same term have nothing in common but their name. Technically the word attached to the object in hand or in a picture is the signifier and that which is so signifier is the nominatum [that which is nominated] BUT BEWARE - it is ONLY considered the nominatum if it ACTUALLY EXISTS otherwise it is called the designatum (that which is assigned a name or title WHETHER IT EXISTS OR NOT!) This is critical to the nominalist and eliminativist agenda.

GARY. C. MOORE
I agree whole heartedly.
Nomen, name. Its interpretation as to 'objective' FUTURE POSSIBLE USE OR CONNECTION is not. That is human action, motion. [Is it a lion's, though? Vaguely, I think a lion IS motion just as Stein is not interested in whether Lord Jim is good or evil but simply what he is, as a specimen, as a butterfly, as a scientifically observed biological object. I have GOT to get back to that. I had a point at one time . . . I think . . .] You try it, and if it works, it works. If not, then not. Objectively materially demonstrable.

JUD EVANS:
Very interesting. You are one of the deepest thinkers I have ever encountered. One could just as much think a cosmos AS motion for everything n the cosmos moves and that which does not move does not exist. Having said that I prefer 'The Moving Lion' and 'The Moving Cosmos' because 'movement' itself is a fiction and the lion is certainly not which you would soon discover if you put your hand between the bars of the cage.

GARY. C. MOORE:
But think of the necessarily great intelligence of the lion who has no words or abstractions of any sort. The lion and his lionesses certainly set into a context it knows extremely clearly, all the objects and calculated to be 'acting towards a goal intended to be attained and which is believed to be attainable' but with factual knowledge of his and his lionesses abilities compared to the abilities of his prey. With no mathematics, distances are carefully calculated, based on past experience, according to the amount of energy needed to expend to gain the goal but that is strictly limited to only so much extreme effort, so it must be precisely used at the right moment only when all the parties are in perfect relation. Too much or too little of any part of the contextual equation and the prey is gone.

JUD EVANS:
To tackle this thorny problem - the perennial question of: *Entity and Action* are they the same thing?

Firstly why not look at what the definition of *action* is in the dictionary? I will address each definition as I go along:

DICTIONARY
1. The state of being active.

Jud: This all hinges on the acceptance of the notion of the *state of being active,* in the sense that there must exist another *state* which is the *state* of being *inactive'

Now NOTHING IN THE COSMOS is ever in a *state* of being *inactive' If any object/entity in the cosmos was even CAPABLE of being *inactive,* then it simply wouldn't exist in the first place - because the notion of the *inactivity* of ANY physical object is ontologically utterly impossible. Inactive objects do not and cannot ever exist.

Now logically, if this putative *state of *inactivity* is ontologically ruled-out in physics - it follows that there is no other *state* or alternative ontological *way* in which any object in the cosmos can possibly be present as an entity other than as existing as an actively changing object. So why do humans persist in fantasising about this false dichotomy between the naturally active or changing way in which objects exist in conformity with the laws of physics, and the so-called state of *inactivity?*

The reason is that historically the sensorial characteristics of human beings do not allow them to discriminate or discern the changes taking place in objects beyond a certain observational or sensorial threshold - so a false dichotomy twixt *activity* and *non-activity* is engendered where none exists.

*Activity* and *inactivity* then are not *actual states* but imagined states based upon the limitation of sensorially descriptive human beings. *Action* which is undetected by human beings is label *inaction* - the quivering grasshopper is described as being *inactive* until it exists in a mode that is detectable to the human eyes or ears - the quivering but *inactive* grasshopper suddenly becomes *active* when it is heard by the human ear to make a sound - or the human eye detects a leg-movement.
*Movement* then and *change* are mediated labelling attributed to objects at the mercy of the vicissitudes and mutabilities of the sensorial human observer or witness. To the short-sighted human the slight wing tremors of the hovering hawk are indiscernible and therefore it is still. To the deaf human the cuckoo makes no sound.

The apparently inactive robin which as I speak is perched apparently motionless is in fact such a powerhouse of physiological, neurological and quantum-physical energetic change and action - that if a trillion scientists devoted a trillion years to study and record its energetic complexity they wouldn't even arrive at agreement as to what constituted the deterministic concatenational forces that were responsible for the uncountable changes taking place in the robin's left eye-ball.

DICTIONARY
2. *This technical term is a historic relic of the 17th century, before energy and momentum were understood. In modern terminology, action has the dimensions of energyΧtime. Planck's constant has those dimensions, and is therefore sometimes called Planck's quantum of action. Pairs of measurable quantities whose product has dimensions of energyΧtime are called conjugate quantities in quantum mechanics, and have a special relation to each other, expressed in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. ..' www. physlink. com/Reference/Glossary. cfm

JUD EVANS:
For me neither *energy* nor *time* exist. What exists are energised, timed objects. Objects are *timed* by human beings because humans are the only causal objects around this neck of the universe that have the capacity to be aware of *change* and to relate the *duration* of *change* in other objects to other changing objects [like the apparent way in which the sun *changes* its apparent position in the sky. *Change* in causal objects is defined as *energy* and objects which exist in modes which are beyond the reach of the human sensorial equipment - like my gatepost - are described as lacking *energy* simply because the energetic changes going on inside the metal [which if properly or rather improperly harnessed] would be enough to blow up the planet earth in one massive cataclysmic BANG!

DICTIONARY
3. In physics, the action principle is an assertion about the nature of motion, from which the trajectory of an object subject to forces can be determined. The path of an object is the one that yields a stationary value for a quantity called the action. Thus, instead of thinking about an object accelerating in response to applied forces, one might think of them picking out the path with a stationary action.

JUD EVANS:
The way I see it there is no *nature of motion* because neither *motion* nor *motionlessness* exist. It is not the natural event that involves a change in the position or location of something - it is the thing that changes position which exists. Why does science persist in this ugly and unnecessary obfuscation and basically unscientific nomenclature? Why not address things in the language of TWTWI and say: * The action principle is an assertion about the nature of moving objects, from which the trajectory of such objects subject to other causal objects can be determined' This ontological correction provides no threat whatsoever to the nature of scientific investigation and description, but would remove another rotten plank in the decaying edifice that props up religion and transcendentalism.

DICTIONARY
4. An action, as philosophers use the term, is a certain kind of thing a person can do. You might throw a baseball, and this is obviously an action. You can catch a cold, and this is not an action. But is merely deciding to do something an action? Is unsuccessfully trying to do something an action? Are believing, intending, and thinking kinds of action? Do all actions involve bodily movement? Are all the effects of actions also actions? For example, poisoning a well is an action. ... en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Action_(philosophy)

JUD EVANS:
An *action* is NOT *a certain kind of thing a person can do* because *action* does not exist. What exists are human actors who modify the way that they exist by throwing a ball or writing a letter. You cannot *catch a cold* which is part of folklore and old wives tales - colds are caused by a virus which the human sensorial system cannot see. A cold represents tissue damage caused by agents called viruses which are deterministically *programmed* to find human hosts and use them for there own survivalist purposes.

Bottom line?

The dichotomy twixt actor and action is a false one stemming from the inadequacies of the human sensorial system and the gap which exists between science and a conservatively-minded folk philosophy which trails lamentably behind it in the basic understanding of physics. Science is equally guilty in my opinion for not updating its terminology in light of modern ontology. Whilst it is acceptable and indeed communicatively essential that qualifying verbs are used to distinguish different actorial modes in causal objects, it is dangerous to reify these verbs into phenomenological objects in the manner of Dennett and other neo-Platonists - for although he hotly deny this label - that is EXACTLY what he is if he makes such statements as:

              'Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon'