Noah
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ORIGINAL: ElektraUkM
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ORIGINAL: Noah
Are thoughts 'Acts', or not? Personally, I could argue from either perspective. I don't believe either is a better, truer, more useful way of looking at those 'internal goings on' than the other. To me, they're philosophical alternatives, neither of which has a particular advantage over the other.
Now while I like a good debate about philosophical alternatives, and while this particular question (are thoughts Acts..?) is an interesting one, I'd really question whether or not that debate helps with the discussion we were having about the original premis ~ are external (the way I took it) actions value-free in themselves?
Ah but this is the rub, Elektra. The original question didn’t specify "external" acts so don’t you go trying to smuggle it in at that point.
Unless you want a spanking.
The OP and many subsequent posters including myself may have restricted their thinking to externals at first.
Then, one very insightful (to me) poster raised the spectre of a certain sort of internal act which might (or might not) by its very nature be submissive. If this wacky species exists, like the aquatic lizards of the Galapagos, should we refuse to see it because until the day Cooke (or Darwin or whomever) landed there it had been held as axiomatic that lizards were strictly terrestrial?
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I'd still agree with that premis, and I find it interesting that (unless I've missed something) no-one has even attempted to argue that any particular Physical Act is, in itself, dominant or submissive.
But to go along with your argument for a while. IF we consider a thought/decision to be an Act, then can it be stated that all decisions are 'dominant'? Since who is to submit to, within our minds..?
But then one could argue that in all decision-making (if we're considering that decision-making is what happens in the mind when we change from one state to another ~ something else which is arguable) we 'submit' to something beyond our own consciousness ~ to instinct, or something else..? (therefore, all decisions are 'submissive' to 'something beyond').
Sure, we could squeeze ourselves through those kinds of hoops but no one else here seems interested in them and you don’t seem to be either, really. So why don’t we provisionally mark them as probably not terribly fruitful and set them aside until something puts them before us as questions that might illuminate the original issue.
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And then we get to the position which I indicated in an earlier post ~ that the outcome of these types of questions is dependent on the model of the brain/reality/anything you care to mention that you are using in debating these questions. As I said earlier, these things are interesting, but what is liable to happen (and what has happened here) is that the debate becomes one of 'which model of the mind/brain/whatever do you subscribe to?' (Which is why your opening question came up).
I really don’t think so, Elektra. I don’t have to take recourse to any particular model of the mind/brain or of reality to note that we all commonly talk of decision-making, for instance, as an active process even though it doesn’t present the person standing nearby with any observable physical activity. Deciding is commonly spoken of as something we do, by Freudians, Jungians, Maslovians; by, Dualists, Monists, and people holding all sorts of models of brain function and/or reality.
No, I don’t see that much of anything here turns upon one’s preferred theory or model of mind or metaphysics.
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Personally, unless there's a specific reason why we'd want to call internal Acts, 'Acts' (the specific reason here seemingly 'because it suits your thesis'?  ), I would tend, in conversation, to stick with the usual division of Thoughts vs. Acts. Which interestingly, I think is the division you go on to use in most of the rest of your post... Most of which I've snipped because I see what you've written as an extended argument for championing one way of viewing the Thought-Act thing over the other.
I tend in conversation to stick with expressions like "the sun came up" but I am ever so grateful to Copernicus and friends for their careful exposition of the sense in which I should acknowledge that it is more faithful to how things are to think in terms of the horizon going down.
Is there any specific reason to admit that some lizards spend a lot of time underwater? I can collect my paycheck without doing so. I am a great believer in endeavoring to see things as they are, first. Then, often, some further understanding arises based on that clarity. Sometimes, well, it was merely interesting. I don’t demand a special reason to see clearly before I’ll make the effort—and I’ll bet that in practice neither do you.
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To describe the intention is not to describe the activity.
And vice versa, which is what I'm arguing  .
And arguing quite ably, dear. But some of us have noticed a lizard in the sea who doesn’t appear to be inert and belly up. There appears to some of us to be at least one action, an internal one like deciding or figuring, which is helpfully seen as necessarily submissive in at least one helpful sense.
Yes, any peak can be described as a valley. Any dog an be described as a (grossly deficient or quite superlative) cat. Mistoferin (I think) described the "act of surrender" as a rare and to some a beautiful exception to the general rule that all acts are value neutral. I offered the opinion that this description was insightful and very possibly helpful. To me it had that helpful smell, if you will.
You seemed to reply rather didactically that we should hush ‘cause "everybody knows that lizards live on land, beneath which the sun comes up every day."
As you have seen I share your inclination to be very much guided by how people generally talk. A lot can be shown that way. But ordinary language can embody, by a sort of bad habit, falsity, like the notion that the earth is fixed while the sun goes around it .
When we really look around, Elektra, does ordinary language really support your view more than the opposing one? I think that an awful lot of ordinary language depicts deciding and figuring, for instance, as "doing". That is to say as acting. And if deciding and figuring are commonly and helpfully seen as acts—as shown by ordinary language …
"What did you do then?"
"Well I did two things. I made up my mind, despite some reasons to doubt it, that this was more important than I had first imagined. Next I sat quietly and figured out a way to …."
… then might not surrendering (in the relevant sense) be seen as an act? And if so, are there interesting and helpful-to-see cases—in opposition to mistoferin’s view--where a surrender like the very genuine emotional surrender of a submissive to a dominant can be viewed as an instance of that that submissive, at that moment, in an important sense dominating that dom? If you see them please share them.
Glib, uninteresting turns can be taken, sure. For instance the preposterous notion propounded in some vanilla literature that "the bottom is always in control." But setting aside that kind of glib talk I think that something rare and odd and beautiful has been pointed—just like on that day when collarme.com first showed me your profile. I think that to recognize such a thing for what it is a sufficient end in itself irrespective of what internal or external actions may flow from the recognition.
So the ball is in your court. Feel free to turn around and bend saucily at the waist to pick it up for another volley--or to demurely acquiesce. I'm sure I’d enjoy each as well.
Noah
< Message edited by Noah -- 7/22/2005 1:44:22 PM >
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RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? - 
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