Anderson wrote rich dense texts which I excavate. I have not found an America but I have found a Columbus.
Joelle, rapt in cosmic vision and intuition, starves. She must be interrupted for a sandwich, milk and sleep.
Whereas Minds and Brains is about the relationship between subjective mental processes and objective cerebral processes, "Brains And Bodies" is about the relationship between the ability to think and the need to eat. When I wrote a thesis, I worked until I was interrupted by hunger, ate just enough to end the hunger, drank just enough to end the thirst caused by eating and returned to work after at most half an hour. Ideally, Platonically, I would have worked unceasingly.
Plato said that philosophy was preparation for death because, after death, the soul will be able to think without being interrupted by bodily needs. CS Lewis was a Christian Platonist: "It's all in Plato..." See here. I frequently compare or contrast Poul Anderson's hard sf with Lewis' theological sf. Lewis expresses profound moral insights but also assumes without ever discussing or demonstrating body-surviving souls:
"...if that other world is once admitted..."
-CS Lewis, Letters To Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London, 1966), XXII, p. 120.
That is one big "if." And religious believers use the word "know" ambiguously:
"We don't know it will be." (ibid.) (Lewis' emphasis)
"...we know that we shall be made like Him..." (p. 124) (my emphasis)
Meanwhile, I continue to think with my brain and now need to eat.
(Goth Night tomorrow evening and day trip to the monastery on Sunday - I meditate but do not believe in rebirth.)
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
If C.S. Lewis was a Christian Platonist, then I am personally far more inclined to be a Christian Aristotelian or Scholastic. Indeed, I recall Anderson mentioning the Scholastics quite favorably in IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS?
Plato's speculations about ideal archetypes or Forms strikes me as ultimately unsatisfactory. The insistence on logic and reason by the Aristotelians and Scholastics was far sounder.
Sean
Kaor, Sean!
C.S. Lewis thought well of Plato, no doubt, but I’m not sure whether he would quite have identified as a Christian Platonist. Maybe he would have. By the way, you’re right that when a pulsar signal was first detected, there was speculation that it was artificial, and I believe it was given the identifying tag LGM-1, the letters standing for Little Green Men. However, a satisfactory astrophysical explanation was found that did not involve extraterrestrial intelligence.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Post a Comment