From: ml (mbtlehn@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Sep 13 2004 - 21:52:08 BST
Hello Scott:
Forgive my tardiness on this thread, I've been
spending energy elsewhere.
----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Roberts
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 7:06 PM
Subject: RE: MD A bit of reasoning
<snip>
[Scott:]
A particular is not a pattern. To be a pattern requires (a) repeatability,
and (b) cognizability, that is, to be graspable as a whole, since otherwise
there is way to appreciate value. But anyway...
mel:
Minor point...there are patterns that are distinctly not repeatable
as far as anyone knows and not graspable in toto. That is to
say the result is unknown, but the creation is defineable.
It would seem then that a single iteration pattern is possible.
[Scott:]
It is a myth that the MOQ has dissolved the mind/matter debates. It has
appeared to have done so only be redefining some words so that the debates
can no longer be adequately expressed. This is what materialism does, except
the MOQ has added the word "quality", so that anything mysterious can be
said to be done by DQ. which is no more help than saying it is done by God.
mel:
I think it would be more accurate to say that the mind/matter distinction
was a myth in the first place. It is an example of paradoxical reasoning
where one can state a formal definition of non-sense and pretend that
it means something. Since mythical understanding is the allegory or
analog pattern of explanation used in much of thought and education
we can say alternatively one can take general simplified notions of
poorly understood phenomena and pretend enough comprehension
to speak athoritatively.
Better is to understand that the assumptive structure used to test
"the universe" is limitedly useful and will tell you only about the way
the universe looks according to THAT structure. No more, no less.
[Scott:]
mel:
The mind/matter question is not resolved unless the following questions have
answers:
If there was a time that there were no universals, how did the first
universal get created?
In existence, there was no time before universals, but the first
instance of a sub-set allowed a relative distinction to exist.
What is the origin of language?
Awareness precedes language, which is merely an accretive
specialized example of abstracted currency.
Why does thinking and feeling seem to come from "within" (to be "me") while
sense perception seems to come from "without" (to be caused by "not me")?
In many people's earliest memories, there was no distinction between
within and without. That is a learned distinction, both a mirror and
words teach this. Within is always from your point of view at the
moment of experience and memory, without is your ability to
abstract from the now and approximate elseness in relation to your
point of view. (All of this is as you apprehend. The rest of the
universe exists when you do not remember, as do you. - sleep ]
Why does simply thinking that subject/object dualism is "just a static
pattern of intellectual value" not allow one to dissolve the difference
between me and not-me?
In most cases when you say or think "me" you are holding
an entire learned set of "me-ness" rules and social functions,
rather than simply the pure consciousness of your-point-of-
view-now, just as you are holding the learned set of SOM
rules and definitions.
Sometimes, rarely, you can lay it all down and BE without
the baggage. [lots of names and descriptions of this...]
Why is being aware of what I just thought different from being aware of the
tree in front of me? (note: in SOM these are two different kinds of objects.
In the MOQ one cannot say that, since in the MOQ only inorganic and
biological patterns can be objects of awareness.)
same as "within" - "without"
Is mind identical to the brain (or: can there be mind, or consciousness,
without a brain)?
Nope! [not for humans that can exists as "normals"]
[Scott:]
And so on. The MOQ's answers (at least as you give them above, and I haven't
seen any better answers) amount to dualism. There was matter (static
particulars) and then there was mind (static universals). Unless DQ is God
and created universals ex nihilo, in which case the MOQ is theistic. Unless
universals "really are" reducible to particulars (say neural events), in
which case the MOQ is materialist. In short, the MOQ provides nothing new
for a philosophy of mind.
mel:
Don't try to make the MoQ be TOO MUCH...it need
not be a gilded lilly.
[Scott:]
I had better repeat that I do find value in the MOQ, and that recognizing
the reality of value is extremely important, and I certainly agree with it
that the upper levels morally trump the lower. So what I am getting at here
is to point out that as a metaphysics it is drastically incomplete, and
without something drastic like my first point in the "bit of reasoning"
(that all SQ are universals) there is no hope of moving on with it. To do so
requires changing its existing attitude toward intellect, away from a SOM
one (nominalistic).
mel:
MoQ has certainly not benefitted from rigorous formulation by
large numbers of BIG BRAINS, as has other meta-pooh.
(And yes, I acknowledge that I don't have answers to these questions either,
at least ones that can be expressed without violating the law of the
excluded middle, or without questioning the absoluteness of time. My
position (borrowed from Peirce, Coleridge, Barfield, Nishida, etc.) is that
the answers require polarity, or contradictory identity. That subject and
object arise together, that each defines the other as it negates the other.)
mel:
Slot screwdriver doesn't work well in Phillip's head...
thanks--mel
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