I'm good so far. I presume you're going to tell me the relationship between Being and the neutral, and why both are required?
~~ Paul
I'll answer the second question first. Why are both required?
The answer is that both are required if we are going to avoid getting re-embroiled in the ontological mess that we have been discussing in this thread. I hope that the arguments so far have shown you that the only way to coherently defend materialism is to defend eliminative materialism. But there is a problem with eliminativism: nearly everybody thinks it is absurd. The result, in terms of the history of ideas, is demonstrated by hammegk. It is hammegk's argument that this system is supposed to avoid. His position goes something like this:
A) The language we use to describe our experiences of reality is inherently dualistic
B) But we all agree dualism must be wrong
C) Therefore monism must be true
D) The only form of materialist monism which stands up is eliminativism
E) The only alternative is idealist monism
F) So we must choose between (D) and (E)
G) We can't choose (D) because denying the existence of minds is absurd
H) Therefore idealism must be true
My argument departs from hammegk's at step (E). The purpose is to block his claim that the only alternative to eliminative materialism is idealism. The reason I want to do this is because I do not believe idealism gives the correct account of the nature of the reality external to mind which I have claimed exists, which you presumably agree exists, but which hammegk claims does not exist.
Now - how does my system avoid the problems? Why do we need both the Zero and the neutral entity? The answer is that in the monist systems of both the eliminative materialist and the eliminative idealist
there isn't enough theoretical space to account for the dualism we acknowedged right back at (A). That's why both those systems end up having to eliminate something. The materialists eliminate mind, the idealists eliminate matter. Both of them do it because their system of fundamental existents hasn't got enough
bits in it to account for these apparently different thing. There is no space in the system for two sorts of stuff. So one of them has to go. The reason I need
both Being/Zero
and the neutral entity is to make enough theoretical space
within the system to avoid having to eliminate anything at all, whilst at the same time avoiding being a dualist.
I'll wait for a response to this bit before continuing.
