Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 19:29:22 +1000
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Community and Ethics


Eric/All,

eric wrote, quoting Lyotard,

> "It is not "I" who is born, who is given birth to. "I" will be born
> afterwards, with language, precisely upon leaving infancy.  My affairs
> will have been handled and decided before I can answer for them - and
> once and for all: this infancy, this body, this unconscious remaining
> there my entire life."

This sounds like mysticism.  By definition, no one knows their
unconsciousness.

Psychoanalysts attempt to induce in patients a revelation of their
unconscious.  When the patient is able to recollect a long-forgotten,
childhood memory, revelation is presumed, but accuracy of the revelation may
be suspect, a distortion.  Or it might be an accurate recollection of events
that never happened, events that were dreamed.

As concerns the biological and the anthropological, L's statement suggests
a never-never region between hard-wired intelligence, nature's intelligence
which creates a human form, organs, first heartbeat, first cry,
and acquired intelligence (speech, walking, for example) of the conscious
brain.

For me, it also suggests that the community of inter-personal relationships
which enable the infant to become a child, an adolescent, an adult, form its
ethical nature long before ir is aware of ethical problems posed by
religions and philosophies.

regards,
Hugh