From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Mon May 30 2005 - 06:02:51 BST
Scott,
To cut a long story short - I'm pressed for time right now ...
I think this encapsulates the issue ... You said
Explanation is another modernist way of thinking, an avoidance of
recognizing that the real problem is explanation itself.
I say
In which case - not me - I am definitely beyond modern and post
modern. I had a whole thread running earlier on "quality of
explanation" being the key issue - the point being that it is far more
than objective inductive rationale. Therefore as you implicitely point
out - I do (openly) use "physics" as meaning the vehicle for this
"explanation of everything real" not just the tangible / empirical
world.
Ian
On 5/28/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@localnet.com> wrote:
> Ian,
>
> Ian said:
> If I'm going to happy spending my life as a poor deluded modernist,
> you're really going have to explain "modernist" in simple terms ....
> but I think we're closer than might appear.
>
> Scott:
> By "modernism" I mean roughly SOM, but add to it nominalism, which I see as
> mutually dependent on SOM. A modernist, then, is one who extends the naive
> view that there is a reality that is simply "there", and thinking and
> language came into existence (either through Darwinist means, or as
> installed in a body by God) in order to think about and talk about what
> exists independently of thinking and language. Now with QM, this edifice has
> been shaken, as you know, but in various ways I see you and Pirsig and most
> everybody as trying to get over SOM but without addressing its mutual
> dependence on nominalism, and so failing.
>
> Ian said:
> I may think "intellect" has arisen (evolved in my case) from a world
> without it, but I didn't mention consciousness. As I've said many
> times, I do in fact believe, there is something physical behind
> conciousness, that is not yet understood.
>
> Scott:
> As I see it, the word "physical" should be restricted to that which our
> senses convey to us, namely the spatiotemporal inorganic world. Otherwise,
> one will simply call "physical" whatever our theories might come up with,
> and the word loses a useful distinction. So in this sense, QM is not a
> theory of the physical except that from it one can make predictions that one
> can measure in the phsyical terms of space, time, and mass. But is
> superposition a physical property?
>
> But in what you say there is also an example of what I said above ("in
> various ways I see you and Pirsig and most everybody as trying to get over
> SOM but without addressing its mutual dependence on nominalism"), and that
> is that you seek for something that is to be understood. The mystery,
> though, is understanding itself.
>
> Ian said:
> Your (1) - yes, with you on these triplets.
> Your (2) - I did just say in a parallel thread - the 4D-Spacetime of
> "pop-science" is clearly only a convenient metaphor, but not much like
> reality it turns out.
> Your (3) - the "modern" language is losing me ... but you end up with
> what is now mystical is the normal of the future. I agree. Mystical =
> Unexplained.
>
> Scott:
> If you agree with (1), then, unless you espouse dualism, I would think you
> have to agree with me that Quality, Consciousness, and Intellect are all at
> the ultimate metaphysical level ("the same (non)-thing"), and so the MOQ is
> wrong to place intellect as the fourth level of SQ.
> On (2), if time is not fundamental, and you agree with (1), then there is no
> reason to be a Darwinist, no?
> On (3), see above. Which implies that I do *not* agree that Mystical =
> Unexplained. Explanation is another modernist way of thinking, an avoidance
> of recognizing that the real problem is explanation itself.
>
> Ian said:
> The "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" I prefer to think of the
> word aesthetic here as simply to draw attention away from objective /
> empirical aspects of experience - obviously aesthetics as we would
> know it, has arisen from human behaviour post-experience, but I don't
> believe that's what Northrop was talking about.
>
> Scott:
> Well, my main point is arguing against the privileging of the
> undifferentiated over the differentiated (again, a nominalist way of
> thinking, that there is this pure non-linguistic, undifferentiated world
> that language and thinking make distinctions *about*). Instead, the
> undifferentiated and the differentiated are in contradictory identity,
> resulting in/from quality/consciousness/intellect. That is, using the
> picture from the companion thread, the undifferentiated and the
> differentiated are the two more comprehensible -- but wrong if treated in
> isolation -- axes leading away from the contradictory identity center.
>
> Ian said:
> What I can or cannot say about form and formlessness - I've seen that
> tetralemma before, naturally. The problem is you get back to
> fundamental liguistic problems, and I can hardly say anything. I did
> in fact say "aspects of form and formlessness" not that it existed as
> both, but we're getting into lingusitic knots.
>
> Scott:
> In discussing the Trinity, the Catholic magisterium warns against two
> heresies: tritheism and modalism. Modalism is the temptation to say that the
> Father, Son and Spirit are three aspects of one God. So, regardless of the
> truth of the Trinity, I find it useful to borrow that logic, and the fact
> that we get into linguistic knots is the whole point. One only avoids the
> knots by moving into error, which is the substitution of something
> understandable for that which cannot be understood. The error one gets with
> modalism is thinking that 'form' and 'formlessness' are just words, so again
> it is nominalism rearing its ugly head. Instead, one should regard them as
> real forces that produce/are produced by consciousness/quality/intellect.
> The function of the LCI is to keep one in that undecidable thought-space.
> (By the way, the fourth horn of the tetralemma ("one cannot say neither X
> nor not-X") says that one cannot stop asking the question, which is why
> Rortyan pragmatism is also not the answer.)
>
> - Scott
>
>
>
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