Re: virus: free thought

Brett Lane Robertson (unameit@tctc.com)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 21:36:52 -0500


What is this groping for the supernatural all about anyway? In what
way does 'behavior' differ from magic in your statement above? And which
is a truer statement? Why confound the terms?

And again, how can you claim that the symbol is a property of the object?
Will you not retract that? Why are you making me wander in your universe?
It has no floor....Wade T. Smith

List,

Wade asks "Why grope for the supernatural?": Because "supernatural" is an
explanation which exists and which can either be disregarded (along with
whatever usefulness it contains) or adapted to modern thought...I adapt.

Wade asks how behavior differs from magic: The important point of the
"magic"/behavior *continuum* is that behavior is more flexible..."magic" is
just arranging thoughts according to systems which are *precise* and which
influence behavior--most likely through natural channels--by asking the
right questions, giving the right answers, making the right suggestions,
influencing the thoughts and thought processes of the person behaving (the
system used to understand these cognitive-behavioral modification techniques
is not all that important, magic or psychology, but lets not discount
thousands of years of study in a field called "magic").

Wade says I claim the symbol is a property of the object: Difficult point.
I claim that the symbol has necessary properties similar to those properties
which are necessary to objects--which makes the symbols less flexible and
more objective in this sense. Also, I draw a connection between the
necessary rigidity of the symbol and the properties of objects (that the
symbolic "small" is understood to be so as it relates to the totality of
objects and their relationship to each other...that "small" is thus most
properly a specific size as regards all comparisons between objects). But,
to say that an object has a property called symbol may be stretching
things...though to have a variation of "small" which (as regards all other
"smalls" in various relations to other objects) most exactly corresponds to
"ball" (for example or even a specific ball) is not so far fetched. And to
use the symbol to access the symbolic (mathematical, necessary, etc.) realm
is to see the "small" ball as having certain relationships which might more
simply sum to produce answers about this ball...as the relationships in the
symbolic realm are omnipresent while the comparisons between all objective
balls are not.

As to the "floor" of this symbolic universe...it is adequately solid for the
"being" which walks there (who is only a symbolic being for all that).

Brett
http://members.tripod.com/~Brettman35/index.html
ICQ &MindRec "Chat" UIN 6630756

You can discover what your enemy fears most
by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer