Re: Subject/object

["Krispen Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

I resonate well with this, Samba, namely that much of our divisions 
between 
mind and external world, word and object, and even divisions within the 
so-called external world (which I regard a logical fiction) are arbitrary, 
or at most pragmatic tools for us to communicate and get by in daily life. 
One might view the world as a fluid or one stream of experience, from 
which 
we create superficial divisions...like a patch of color based on 
boundaries, 
or the sense of self as different than the external world, or what we 
think 
of as a self-contained object...when in fact, all is One. After all, 
strictly from a visual sense data standpoint, everything that we think o 
as 
a separate entitiy is in fact in juxtaposition with everthing else...no 
boundary except that of shape, shade, etc. I suppose this is somewhat 
consistent with eastern thought, Hinduism, where Brahman is considered the 
One, the only real and legitimate entity...everything else, like pieces of 
ice floating in the sea of Brahman, are illusory.

If you have the patience for it, here is a paper I wrote several years ago 
after sneaking into the philosophy library after hours at the University 
of 
Washington (during a philosophy conference I was attending). I was doing 
research on modern skepticism, which developed into an idea that I 
stipulated as the "sphere of awareness".  If you read this, you'll 
probably 
know more about it than me, since it has been so long since I read it. 
Basically, I posit that all knowledge (and thus our epistemology) is 
limited 
to the items of direct awareness, where those items are only arbitrarily 
defined/divided for convenience.

http://www.myweb.cableone.net/chagstrom2/aware.html

It is a very radical form of epistemology, which really reduces what we 
think of as the world or universe to a very limited notion.  You might 
suspect that my theory is just a radical and revised theory of 
phenonemalism, which is correct. It is an epistemology based on a revision 
of phenomenalism - aka, the viewpoint that came out of the work of the 
logical positivists, Bertrand Russell, and some other tangential 20th 
Century Analytic linguistic philosophers.

Kris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "samba -" <sambacomet@hotmail.com>

>  I'm inclined to the view that subject/object is merely a linguistic 
> mechanism,a grammatic conceit The word grammar originally refered to 
> magic,as does the word spell,and even the word 'word' itself 
>-enchantment 
> etc.are all related to the beleif (said to be an obsolete aristotelian 
> category) that the world is created by the word The big Bang theory was 
> proposed by a Christian monk trying to reconcile modern scientific data 
>w/ 
> Genesis I prefer to think of it as Shiva's drumbeat . I think we create 
> our sense of a seperation between ourselves and the the World.or Cosmos 
> by our linguistic categories.Bhuddism has alot of techniques for 
> recognizing ways in which mental constructs such as 
> beleifs,categories,languages and symbol systems etc.function as lenses 
> that distort the input,when emplyed in a habitual unconscious way'
>
>
>