Re: [Mind's Eye] beyond the 'unheard tree'

And to what end doe you have a rowan tree for?

Allan

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 8:46 PM, archytas <nwterry@gmail.com> wrote:

Questions like whether the tree is in the quadrangle if no one is
looking are classroom tricks aimed at getting some thinking going.
Frege had some ideas I've not seen discussed in here.  For him, ideas
were not thoughts.  Thoughts existed in a third realm.  I'm shaky on
phenomenology - largely because a lot of it ends up in a complex
lexicon of terms to describe itself.  Heidegger suggested the firm
ground of our lives was a better place to consider thoughts and
thinking.

Ordinary objects like trees are problematic in philosophy - they turn
out to be some structure of atoms and so on.  Some have suggested we
should exclude them.  In language I can say that 'unheard trees have
been done to death' and most will get the drift, without thinking I
have been out beating unheard trees with my cricket bat.  Frankly, if
the unheard tree stuff had an import we'd find illegal logging
companies telling us about it when their sawmills were full and our
forests empty.

More interesting to me is that I can say (truthfully) that there is a
rowan tree in my front garden.  Confirming this is relatively
straightforward.  What I think we need to be better able to spot as in
need of argument is stuff like the context of argument that allows
politicians to tell us the same lies over and over again.  This might
help is to a better grip on what democracy is as a theory-in-action.

Let me cast this by saying I believe Winston Churchill was an American
spy and bag man for JP Morgan - against the fact that there is a rowan
tree in my front garden.  It's easy enough for you to ask for evidence
to establish beyond doubt that the rowan tree is where I say it is
(however much we might discuss its atoms or whether it's there when
none of us is watching it).  What we should ask is why the Churchill
thing is so much more difficult (I can't prove this to my own
satisfaction as a fact - but what would be the grounds)?

--
 (

  )

|_D Allan

Life is for moral, ethical and truthful living.