@fresco,
Nothing in there is particularly new, nor is a 'solution' to the cogito. On the contrary, the idea that life operates under its own set of rules, independent and new as compared to the rules of classic or quantum physics and chemistry, leads to the idea of several levels in nature, each one building on the underlying level but not reductible to it. In this vision, the mind can be seen as just another level of nature. Ergo Descartes was at worse simplistic in seeing the two levels of living mater and mind as belonging to radically different orders. Rather, mind builds upon body, but cannot be reduced to it.
As an aside, I find it funny how pretty much all modern philosophers of cognition (particularly of anglo origin) are still kicking Descartes' dead body again and again, with very little effect since we still unable to account for the mind in a mecanical way (and IMO never will). Instead, they should try and build upon his ideas.
Quote:2. What I mean by relativistic existence is that "observer" and "observered" are two sides of the same coin. "Things and their thingers" are coexistent and co-extensive. Neither has existential status its own right. ies)
You realize that there was a universe long before there was anyone observing it, right?
In my view, you are confusing the
virtual world we construct unconsciously in our mind (complete with sounds and colors and smells which are pure mental constructs) with the
real world out there (which essential nature is ultimately unknowable, but where the air vibrates, for instance, or light waves combines different waves lengths, or where entities emit chemicals floating in the air). What you say applies to our mental, virtual reconstruction of the world, e.g. to a vibrant orange color, the sound of a violin playing Vivaldi, the perfume of a rose, etc., but not to the real world out there, which exists whether or not somebody perceives it.
Quote:3. Kuhn argued that "falsifiability" was aimed at distiguishing between "real science" from "pseudo-science" (specifically Marx and Freud) but had little relevence to "what scientists do"( which is paradigmatic,transient and aimed at elegance in attempts to predict and control).
Yes, Kuhn did refine and usefully critique Popper, but what I was referring to was Popper's three worlds, an idea he developed at the end of his life and exposed in annexes to his "Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism" (at least in the French edition): basically the idea exposed above about different levels of nature, each level building upon the level below rather than being reductible to it. In this view, the world of knowledge and ideas is to a degree autonomous from individual minds, themselves partly independent from the underlying biological world, itself partly independent from inanimated mater.
