Re: BHA: <fwd> S.J. Gould on new genome findings

["E. Claro" <ec213@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear list members,

Although I have been reading some of the earlier work of Bhaskar for some
years and passively listening to the dialogues on the list, I have
never felt the need or impulse to contribute before. However, after
reading Erik's last post I thought I had something useful to send. Despite
not being completely about "emergence", the following passage from Plato's
Phaedo seems to be closely related.

Plato, Phaedo. In The dialogues of Plato, translated into English by
B. Jowett. Volume I, Fourth Edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1964 (1871).

99 a-b
"There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all
this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and other
parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say at the same
time that I act from mind, and that I do as I do because of them and not
from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of
speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the
condition without which the cause would never be the cause; it is the
latter, I think, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always
mistaking and misnaming 'cause'". (p. 456).

While this passage recognises that a person cannot act purposefully
without her body, it does not entail that the body explains all of her
actions. Very similar to Bhaskar's argument about biology conditioning
human life but not determining it. At the same time, it seems to suggest
that the mind emerged from the body, but that it is not reducible to
it. Maybe Whitehead was somehow correct in arguing that the history of
philosophical thought consists in a series of footnotes to Plato.

Edmundo Claro


On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Erik Weissengruber wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Did you notice at the end when Gould talks about mental properties as
> being emergent from particular genes, but not reducible to that gene.
>
> I have seen CR philosophemes in Gould's writing, and wondered where they
> came from. Is Gould familiar with Bhaskar? Or do they both derive
> certain propositions from Whitehead (who introduced the concept of
> emergence, right?)
>
> >From: Jan Straathof
> >Reply-To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Subject: Re: BHA: S.J. Gould on new genome findings
> >Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 02:53:00 +0100
> >
> >hi all,
> >
> >what i particularly liked in Gould's piece was the mentioning of the
> >so-calles "noncoding regions (introns)/junk DNA,", a nice specimen
> >imo of what RB would call the *presence of absence* as condition for
> >"emergent properties".
> >
> >yours,
> >jan
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
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