metaphors

Jerry's comments are very interesting. I fully agree that thought
cannot be 'initiated outside the present progressive mode'; which is
also to say, that nothing - an object, a genre, a species -, much
less a thought, can be 'initiated' outside that mode -- a mode that
interfiliates the present with the continuity of the past/future and
is therefore, as he says, 'based on a sense of trust' about the
course of future events. This is not knowledge OF those future
events, merely a knowledge 'that' there will be future events and
that these will be events that one can interact with.

This is evident in the pragmaticism of Jerry's later comments, with
their emphasis on the First Law of Logic/Energy, which pertains to
continuity - as well as the 2nd, which pertains to otherness, and
the 3rd, which pertains to relations. (Jerry - you seem to be a
Peircean?)

Therefore,
1. I myself cannot privilege matter, time or space. They are
interfiliated.
2. A 'leap in time' suggests time as an absolute scale separate from
the energy/information, and since my view interfiliates them all,
then, there cannot be any 'leap' from 'now' to' future'.
3. It would be both a scientific and metaphysical question to speak
of the 'start of evolution'. After all, science deals with knowledge
of the existential. Therefore, even though both science and
metaphysics cannot really answer that question, both must consider
it.
4. What are scientific values other than a commitment to
axioms, whose properties are derived from sensation and organized
within reason - and how can these properties not also be human
values? To come up with axioms that are NOT scientific (ie, that
are only based on, as Peirce commented ) merely private opinions,
authoritarian dogma or common belief - is to develop axioms that are
without pragmatic or ethical value.

5. Well, I feel that scientific values are similar to those in other
areas - . Based as they are, on the organization of sensual data
according to logical 'laws' -. The fact that mathematics may exclude
its rules from sensual data does not mean that the logic of those
laws is isolate from the actualities of the sensual world.

6. I think I would like more of an explanation from Jerry on point 6,
before I give a full answer, for I don't feel that any of the three
laws are operative alone. They only operate, as laws, because they
are each, there and interfiliated with each other.

Best regards,

Edwina Taborsky
Bishop's University Phone:(819)822.9600 Ext.2424
Lennoxville, Quebec Fax: (819)822.9661
Canada JIM 1Z7
Received on Wed Dec 09 09:56:39 1998