Subject: BHA: Re: RE: Re: Against "primacy"
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:56:15 -0500


Hi Dick--

It's true about the fuzziness of the real world, and our attempts to frame
it with clear categories.  On the other hand, a great many of our categories
aren't so clear either, having multiple meanings often clustered around a
"best example" or a network of "family resemblances."  For instance,
"mother", a term that gets very complicated when you consider divorce,
remarriage, adoption, foster parenthood, egg donors, surrogates, and the
like: biological mother? birth mother? a women who takes care of a child
over a long period? a woman who has legal guardianship over a child?  Etc.

But back to the materialism/idealism issue, one of the things that bothers
me about the argument that the distinction is non-existent or doesn't matter
is that it isn't at all obvious what's supposed to stand in its place.  If
there is no such thing as primacy, where does theorization start, what are
the appropriate analytical methodologies, what counts as evidence, and what
constitutes proof?  The position seems wide open to an "anything goes"
approach.

Thanks, T.

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


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, 19 November 2003 9:42 AM
Subject: BHA: RE: Re: Against "primacy"


Hi Tobin,

Well, since I continue to keep at it, I guess I don't regard the primacy
question as a complete waste of time.  On the evolutionary question of a
"non-chicken" laying an egg from which a "chicken" hatches, I don't see this
as an ontological issue so much as a labeling issue.  Ontologically, I don't
think there was ever a sharp line between the "non-chicken" and the
"chicken."  I think that the "chicken" in question would still be
inter-fertile with the birds whom some human observer might say were still
"non-chickens," because they were more like the maternal egg-layer than the
fowl hatchling.

Our words often draw sharp lines around "things" in a fuzzy world.  We
create a "coloring-book" world that misrepresents a world in which "things"
are constituted by their relations with other "things."

Regards,

Dick




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