which PKD?

i'm with Sara, which pkd?

there is a weird magnetic field around the mission today, which appears to be disrupting my connection between subjective reality and the external world. we're not going to read any more pkd for this week. all comments on descartes and/or "the electric ant," should go on this page.

whew!

roger that master brain

I find it extremely interesting that in The Electric Ant, though there is an omnipotent "maker" (insofar as Poole's maker programmed his reality), there is never a question that there are other beings; moreover, Poole never assumes that his maker is the maker of every other being. (Though his perception of Sarah was created by his maker, there's probably some real person out there who wasn't made by Poole's maker.)

This is very different from Descartes, whose reasoning insists that there is -one- God who created everything that is.

What about that whole thing about there perhaps being multiple subjective realities or perhaps one objective reality? i am having fun/a hard time trying to assimilate a maker into that mess. Isn't his perception of the company, and thus the maker, only through this little tape? so isn't that even a "subjective" reality? I mean, in the end all there is is that wind blowng through. Jack had a good question too, if Sarah is only part of his subj. reality then why does she change before disappearing in the end? and why does pkd change from a close psuedo-first person with Poole to a close psuedo-first person with Sarah at the end? when she disappears does she reapper in her own reality? if she is just a part of someone else's subjective reality can she think? or have emotions? aren't those just pretend things that Poole seees from the outside.

I also have a shit load of questions about the descartes, now that he is trying to rebuild his stripped world. That whole section about the modes/accidents is just beginning to make sense, but i stilll don't quite understand the surety he places in the fact that his senses must be true because god wouldn't lie. if there are so many things he admits he cant comprehend about god, then why does he assume to know that goodness must be part of perfection? isn't that just an anthropomorphising of god? why does he necesasarily follow the same moral code?

Michael - the omnipotence of Poole's maker is never really elaborated. Since we assume they are some group of corporate humans, naturally we are pretty sure of their existence. If humans are the "maker" then humans must exist. Right, pretty obvious, I think you knew that. Despite this, I think it is also interesting to note that how far Poole's skepticism goes regarding the existence of others is left fairly vague: he clearly regards Sarah as a mere creation of his reality tape--presumably he feel that at least some other people are also.

So yeah, there are a lot of interesting ramifications regarding the difference in character of the creator figures in PKD and Descartes. Non-deceiving perfection...routine corporate fabrication of reality, possessed of divine understanding...merely possessors of different subjective understandings, etc.

I'm tired.

I second Sara(h)'s dilemmas. Ha, that's pretty clever. Yeah, I still don't know the answers, except to propose that Poole's disillusionment with reality and Sarah's disillusionment with reality are only consistent insofar as they both are disillusionments, ie the main point is the deceptive capability of subjective realities and sense perceptions. I'm not sure if my complicated speculation on a "(1) destruction of Poole's subjective reality tape (2) change in Sarah's personality as perceived by the reader (who is no longer Poole) (3) destruction of the objective reality tape (4) total destruction of Sarah" sequence is really coherent. But maybe it is.

I was also wondering about the multiple realities that PKD presents. I thought it interesting that that Poole could erase objects that exist in his reality, for example the New York skyline. When he alters his reality, does he cease to exist in other realities? I was thinking, what if he had erased things that are in motion? For example people and vehicles. He wouldn’t be able to see or interact with people but then, assuming he still exists in another realities where people exist, how do people perceive him. And then there’s this whole deal with Sara that many of you have pointed out already. I’m still trying to decide what to think of it. Why does she disappear if she’s part of multiple realities? She may have ceased to exist in Poole’s reality but she still existed in her own. Wasn’t that enough? Do the multiple realities interlace at all?

I don't think I actually said much last night. Now that I've actually read the last two meditations, I can comment on them. I find that these later meditations are rendering Descartes' "doubt" about as disappointing as Anaxagoras' "mind" was to Socrates. One of the main objections, like Sara says, and like I think Michael said on a previous page, is this notion that God would not deceive us, although Descartes simultaneously insists that God's motives are unfathomable by human understanding. Now Descartes is just falling back on a position of "if it seems clearly true, it is" and "my previous extreme skepticism was ridiculous" to paraphrase only slightly. Very disappointing.

One other new objection I had raised by Meditation 6 was (I think) his first proof of objects. He claims that the "ideas" of sense perception must come from outside of him because he cannot will them to happen, cannot control whether he perceives a chair, for example. This seems to be quite similar to the criticism of Nietzsche and others that he doesn't control the advent of his thoughts. Descartes even uses the word "idea" for his sensory perceptions! Frustrating guy. I can't will certain thoughts to occur any more than I can will certain sense data to come to me.

After discussing with others after class that last claim I made, I will admit that it is significantly more complicated than my sleepy morning mind was making it. I may still be right, but I might not be. I need to read that part a few more times.