Subject: Re: BHA: Primacy of practice, sophistry, and other fun stuff
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:30:16 -0500


Hi Mervyn--

Well, actually I didn't say that one cannot presuppose a God directing
everything's existence, but instead that James's argument (or anyway, the
paragraph he wrote) could only work *if* one made such a presupposition.  I
don't quite see how all causes could be reasons without a "directing" God;
maybe you'll want to fill that out a bit.  But in any case my point didn't
rule the presupposition out of court.  Of course, once one assumes such a
God, one raises a host of questions about free will and the like, but that's
a different matter.

I'd be very cautious about presentations on contemporary physics.  There's
much to connect the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics to the
positivism/super-idealism problematic (Arthur Fine's *The Shaky Game* is
good on this, and on Einstein's realism).  As I see it, the rejection of the
realism/idealism distinction has a lot to do with the deep connections
between positivism and super-idealism, which in many ways are simply flip
sides of empirical realism.

Meanwhile, re-enchantment can (I think) be achieved by other modes of
thinking.

Thanks,

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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