mind body dicotomy written by an unabshed philosophy poser
hello
This theory is weak and not well done, but I just wanted to get it out there, hopefully to get some feedback, and to expand on it later. Locke will move the island.
How will he move the island?
Because the philosopher Locke (the actual person) believed that the world that we experience is represented in the mind; therefore the mind makes for us the world.
What has this to do with the island?
The island is the mind.
Why is the island the mind?
Because the mainland, where the 6 are, is the body. The body (as Hurley pointed out from the insane asylum) is dead; the mind vivifys the body.
We have a straight up, enlightenment style, mind/body dichotomy on our hands.
Through Locke taking the power to represent inside his mind, he hides the mind, he makes the mind mystical…because it is mystical, it is not accountable to maps, to science, to anybody trying to find it…anyone trying to use a map will be per se lost, because the map can never tell you where it is, because any map, any coordinates you use will have to be wrong.
Locke will move the island…but Locke will have to die. Why? The mystical can be expressed only here. Locke’s world exists only to Locke, to no one else, and it exists through him only through his will. In short what Locke represents is the impossible.
Because Philosophy cannot account for this approach, because I can’t account for this approach, because nobody can account for this approach except for Locke, who we are alls suppossed to be in awe of, and we are…and if you think about it, it doesnt make sense, because if someone would take scissors and cut my spinal cord, the world would still go on around me, right? This is why Hurley says “We are dead”, right now the world is like it is dead, wrapped up in identities alien to ourselves (me Ben the lawyer) we are actors, occupying prefabricated shells. We have been cut off from the mind. And we are lost in that respect.
So tomorrow Locke will do the impossible, and then he will die, because for the island, which is history of the mind, the history of philosophy, his task will be done.
Thank you, goodnight.
descartes/tabula rasa
Your right. Descartes is the original philosopher of the mind on the rational side of the equation. Locke is much associated with the empirical tradition (Locke/Berkely/Hume...).
But, the Humean challenge revealed Locke's empiricism, descartes rationalism to be two sides of the same coin.
Descartes' cogito ergo sum and Locke's tabula rasa both fail (or split in the sky and fall to the earth crashing and burning all the way) because both dont offer an accurate description of how we know. It is unfair to say that both devolve into solipsism, but...
Just think of the blank slate..., your experiences write on that slate. Your mind is the blank slate, while Locke (both Locke's) frame this experience as objective experience, both forget to account for the frame, the body that experiences and that transmits, and conditions "objective" experience. I think this is the essence of the humean challenge. Locke's philosophy violates is/ought dichotomy, becoming equal to the rationalist. Locke attributes the island for the miracle of his legs, but really its Locke's mind that is the miracle.
Tonight he will move the island, he will internalize it and hide it (probably through some artifice) and then he should die, and then guess what, if everything goes to plan, here come the utilitarians!!! (Oversimplistic.)
I think this approach has a politcal line as well. Or, better, a comment on power, as in, while the form of power may change, power itself does not change (ben "im right where I want to be"). Could we say that Ben merely abdicates to Locke as leader, to put Locke in as figurehead, to make it look like Locke is calling the shots, but in installing the figure head, some type of checks and balances limited executive, power just sinks its fangs in deeper?
We could even do a really rough outline: some type of ancient society (4 toes and glyphs on smoke monster door), DI...Greek!, classical in approach; mittleos/Ben, Hobbsian autocrat, Locke representational democracy (Ben kept pointing out that the people were looking to him as leader in a sense electing him...
Ultimately, I think that the island's ownership will be Hume's and Penny's. Why? Its where Philosophy stands in some sense today: We all stand in the radical doubt and skepticism introduced by the humean challenge. Jack is going back to this touchstone will be what it is all about.
I dont want to pretend like Im answering your questions. Like I said Im a poser, or I love philosophy and thats all (and right now its what Im doing while Im suppossed to be studying for the bar). Thank you for speaking with me.
Intriguing
RM--I wouldn't identify you as a poser; far from it. I have some follow-up questions about the mind/body--> island/mainland parallel. I most strongly identify the mind/body duality with Descartes. Descartes skepticism, coupled with the notion of innate features like logical principals, means that Descartes can make that mind/body split in a fairly absolute way. Locke's idea of the mind as tabula rasa puts much more weight on a necessary connection between the two. Does that play into your idea of why Locke's hiding the island must be followed by his death?
I read your theory of Ben as game theorist which kind of made a Ben-Hobbes connection. I think I see a Hobbes/Locke, Ben/Locke parallel--though I'm not sure if it's much more than a contrast between Hobbes's emphasis on a kind of violent self-preservation at the root of individual behavior vs. Locke's emphasis on reason.
Do you think Locke's theory of property--that labor creates property--might wind up connecting to the question of who own's the island?