Intermedium §1

1.
I've left it at a rather odd place - so far as I can see, a position not seriously taken by anyone I've read in contemporary philosophy or science, nor a position I take myself. But this brief post here is not part of my writing about imagination. I've been busy fixing up a paper as a journal article and reading about the concept of space in antiquity and in the medieval tradition, so I've been busy when sitting at a computer. Also, I don't have easy internet access here. It's either the town library or an awkward corner in my parents' dining room (where I am right now).

The dining room has a bay window and a bright light, and looks out into the front garden. The panes of glass are pitch black and I can see nothing out there. But anything out there, nothing or not, can see me in here.

2. 
Though I don't want to get into talk about space for now, as I've no time, I want to mention right something I learned when reading about the old concept of space. All this is from Mark Jammer's 1929 'Concepts of Space' (preface by Einstein). From Google Books:

Hesiod referred to space or the void as chaos.  'Chaos' is gotten from the root 'cha-' which means 'yawning' or 'gaping'. What do chaos and the void have in common? They both lack form and, in the case of the void, it also lacks material.  As Jammer notes, the idea of space or the void as yawning or gaping brings out the terror of it. Like Nietzsche's Abyss.

3. 
Also, I've been babysitting. I watched 'Looney Tunes: Back in Action' with my niece and nephew, and laughed along with them. Watching movies with kids can be a lot of fun. And also very strange - it's hard to forget that they just aren't grown-ups. And: I'm not often around children in my day to day life; it's hard to figure out what to talk to them about.

Tonight, I realised that my subtle tests of their thinking about universals and particulars didn't seem to get anywhere. (This was probably because it's been raining all day, and I'm a little house-locked).

I asked my nephew 'you've seen green things - but do you think you could just see 'green' on its own?' [Subtle test of how he thinks about colours being independent of particulars].

And he said: 'yeah.'

'Really?' I asked.

'Yeah. Vegetables.'

At the time, I thought: ah, he doesn't get it. But now I think it's obviously the other way around: I didn't get it.

Then we talked about whether or not dogs can eat pizza, and then how much easier it would be if we could speak dog.

4. Oh, now I want to write about Horizon's programme on language. But I won't - I won't even link to it. I feel enough of a steamed parsnip as it is - i.e., some sort of dry, dry, dry, tasteless vegetable.

I used to go to nightclubs every night you know. The only gaping void was the dance-floor before I got on it. [No. That doesn't make me sound cool.]

[I'll talk more about universals and particulars, properties, tropes, nominalism later (whenever it seems relevant to do so, anyhow).

5. Concerning my main topic, but not my only topic, this is what I'm going to talk about next (I won't explain what these mean just now):

(a) Physicalism.
(b) The nowhere-ness of mental images.
(c) Denying we experience anything - certainly, denying that we see, hear, touch, etc. anything when we imagine - and why you'd want to say that.
(d) The homunculus fallacy and its misuse.
(d) Practicing the imagination.
(e) Memory images and the imagination.

There'll be other things as well, which I'll shove in around this. There has to be - there are so many other interesting things, and I want to go on about them.

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