Re: virus: socially retarded materialists

MemeLab@aol.com
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 09:31:18 EST

In a message dated 2/18/99 3:33:46 AM Central Standard Time, robin@faichney.demon.co.uk writes:

<< In your assumption that I believe in "ghostly puppeteers", you are betraying your own prejudice. No way am I a dualist. You are just confirming what I said: that materialism is a reaction against dualism -- have you ever seen a pro-materialist argument that did not assume that "the enemy" is dualism? I haven't. You are stuck in a Level 2 dichotomy. :-) If you disagree, and continue to insist that materialistic metaphysics is meaningful, then tell me exactly what "basic kinds of stuff" means. >>

I already did. I talked about matter, energy, organization, control, and material abstractions. And you wrote it off as a semantics game.

>>>Why is it that so many people are tempted to depict materialists as
>somehow
>deficient or impaired as social creatures?

Again, you take me to be saying something quite different from what I actually said. My point, as made clear in the Subject line (which you changed) was about worldviews. The materialistic and social worldviews are inconsistent. Materialists are not (necessarily) less sociable, just (necessarily) inconsistent.<<

I don't see "materialistic" and "social" worldviews as being either distinct from each other or inconsistent. But since you wrote it all off as a semantics game, I am sure you weren't paying much attention to what I actually said.

BTW, this seems to be a common response on this list. If you don't agree with somebody, call their position a "semantics game". You aren't the first person to do so this week. Such an accusation makes it at least as possible that you didn't understand, or didn't want to understand, as that I was merely "playing a semantics game". Consider more possibilities.

-Jake