[Milton-L] Abdiel (thought-sins)

[Michael Gillum]

On 7/6/08 4:44 PM, "Harold Skulsky" <hskulsky at email.smith.edu> wrote:

[snip]> As will be clear in a few short paragraphs, I have reason to doubt
> that I ever identified Dream Eve with Eve.
> 
> Call the series of dreamed events S. For Eve to dream that S is
> happening to her is
> 
>              (a) for Eve to be asleep,
>              (b) for Eve to be encountering S-APPEARANCES but no
> S-REALITIES,
>              (c) for Eve to mistake the S-APPEARANCES for S-REALITIES
>              (d) for Eve (as a result of (c)) to respond to the
> S-APPEARANCES as if they were S-REALITIES.
> 
> Given (a-d), it is Eve (and not a Dream Eve) who is doing the dreaming,
> i.e., who is taken in  by empty S-appearances she encounters, and who
> responds to the S-appearances in various ways ‹ for example, by "damp
> horror" and by irresistibly desiring apples she SEEMS to be seeing,
> smelling, etc. 
> 
> In short, there is no conceptual work here for a Dream Eve to do ‹
> [snip]

Sorry to have misrepresented your position.

A question: why does Eve in the dream feel an irresistible compulsion to
eat? ("I, me thought, / Could not but taste.") Is that a normal response of
Eve, the person, or of any normal person, to the S-appearances of the fruit?
To me it suggests some difference between the dream-self and the proper
self. If we suppose that some of her responses are being manipulated, then
she is not quite herself.

Michael