| Re: Wittgenstein on the Metaphysical Self |
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Group: alt.philosophy · Group Profile
Author: PubliusPublius Date: Sep 20, 2008 10:41
>>One would then need to argue for the
>> superiority of the eternalism model.
>> What explanatory advantages does it
>> offer? Saying that a changing external
>> world is an "illusion" presumes one has
>> adopted, or at least is leaning toward, a
>> static model rather than a dynamic one.
>> Given that experience changes --- and
>> there can be no doubt about that --- then
>> it would seem that a static model would
>> have a difficult time accounting for those
>> manifest phenomenal changes. And
>> accounting for phenomena is the
>> motivation for constructing models in
>> the first place.
> How does this changing "external world" change?
That is one of the things a theory of an external world will specify.
> What, if anything,
> maintains any order or nomological-like habits it may have that persist
> over these changes?
There is no *a priori* requirement for any agency or force to maintain a
postulated order. The order may be postulated to be fundamental. A
primordial persisting order is as conceivable and permissible,
metaphysically speaking, as primordial disorder.
> What compares this "Now" with a past (that no longer
> exists?) and infers differences between them (that something changed?)
> That is, what other than cognitive beings like humans makes a judgement
> that change took place?
There are no theories, scientific or metaphysical, in the absence of
cognitive beings. All theories are produced and evaluated by such beings,
and the only means of evaluating them is by comparison of the predictions
they entail regarding the experience of the beings who formulate them. No
explanatory purpose is served by postulating and contemplating models which
cannot be evaluated via their consequences for experience. That is what the
model is (presumably) constructed to expain.
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