John wrote:
[...] Jeffery, your purpose is most likely located in your cingulate gyrus in your frontal cortex, as is mine. "Good" is a lot more widely distributed. Good in and of itself (whatever that means) probably cannot be shown to purely dwell of anywhere (wherever that is). But things aren't totally bleak: Brian has managed to locate Truth somewhere within the brain (at least he did as of Dec. 16, 2004). I'm sure details will be forthcoming any day now. How do you think things got that way?
[...] Jeffery, your purpose is most likely located in your cingulate gyrus in your frontal cortex, as is mine. "Good" is a lot more widely distributed. Good in and of itself (whatever that means) probably cannot be shown to purely dwell of anywhere (wherever that is). But things aren't totally bleak: Brian has managed to locate Truth somewhere within the brain (at least he did as of Dec. 16, 2004). I'm sure details will be forthcoming any day now. How do you think things got that way?
John,
I should correct this misinterpretation. I don't think that abstractions like "the good" exist" in the brain" or "in the world" (as if there's some substance cooked into certain things). My position is that abstractions exist as a relationship between things in the mind AND the things in the world. The situation is similar to if there was a "collision" between two cars and someone asked whether the collision was in car A or car B, when the collision is in the relationship between both of the things. Certain situations exist in the world and we recognize these situations in our minds into a category of "the good" and to insist that either one or the other can't be begs the question of why we somehow have to choose between the two. That is no more problematic than the idea that some things are such that they reflect certain wavelengths of light and the idea that we see some things as being "blue". Both of these are true and neither fact contradicts the other.
--Brian
