Horse, Troy, Bodvar, Bruce, Mangus and Squad:
I hope to answer Horse's questions about my very first LS posting.
Horse said, "I'm not at all sure that the MOQ would find the question
meaningless. What false or mistaken assumptions are being made? Could
you explain what you mean by dissolving the problem."
The heart of what I meant in my last post is that the thought experiment
itself is based on the assumptions of Subject/Object metaphysics. I hope
it goes without saying, Pirsig's MOQ claims to dissolve many
philosophical problems. THE most important problem that the MOQ resolves
is the mind body problem. The mind/body problem has been the main
sticking point since SOM was "invented". It's the riddle SOM could never
solve. SOM is map of reality that hardly has room for things like
consciousness, quality, values and morals. It is a map of reality that
doesn't cover that territory. To SOM philosophers, that high country of
the mind is "just subjective" or "all in your head". Our thought
experiment is just another way of presenting the mind body problems all
over again.
Horse, you want an example ot these false assumptions? Later in the same
post you asked a question that contains one of those false assumptions.
You asked, "...where do memories physically reside? Memories must exist
somewhere..."
Memories physically reside? Well, if that ain't SOM, I don't know what
is. Is the mind in the body or is the body in the mind. Classic SOM
absurdities.
I realize that its easy to find yourself using standard SOM descriptions
in discussing these issues. There are subjects and objects in nearly
every proper sentence. But that's not what I'm talking about. Our
thought experiement, as it is currently constructed, proposes a genetic
copy, a clone, a DNA based copy. This clearly expresses an object, the
physical aspect of an individual. To look for memories, personality, or
any mental content in the DNA or other biological structures is just so,
so, so SOM.
BUT, Horse also says, "we would have to diverge from the MOQ...this
would imply that our 'self' is firmly grounded in our physical or
material body". Here it seems you recognize the problem with SOM in our
experiment? The mind vs. matter problem is just another name for the
same confusion. It's a classic SOM riddle.
I think Bodvar's response to the idea of transfering memories is quite
relevant. He said, "..I don't think that it is feasible - principally -
within the MOQ framework. The levels are inextricable connected and no
upper level can be isolated or transfered".
I think he's right on. Each of us a unique complex of patterns of value
from all four levels at the same time. In the MOQ universe, that's the
definition of what we are. To suppose any seperation of our minds (soc
and int patterns) from our bodies (org and inorg level patterns) is to
relapse into a SOM view of reality.
Bruce was getting at the same issue in his post. The Danah Zohar quotes
clued me in to the "quantum self" concept. From the quotes Bruce
included, Zohar looks pretty MOQ to me. The claim that I am what I
experience on all four levels, is the same as Zohar's "I am my
relationships".
By describing my clone as such a wretched creature (in the last post) I
was trying to show a purely "physical" me without any of my
experiences. As Zohar says "people can only be the individuals they are
within a context".
I have to say that Bruce's conclusion that the self "lies in the
consciousness" smells like a retreat back into SOM. Instead of finding
self in the body or DNA, he finds it in the mind. Still a mind/matter,
and therfore SOM, solution.
Troy really nails it. He said, "..copying Dynamic elements seems to
me a contradiction of terms ... exact copies of such things are logical
chimeras since DQ is not static, and therfore not copiable". Right on!
Trying to copy something as dynamic as an individual's intellectual
patterns is like trying to hold water in your hands or capture the wind
in a box.
In effect our thought experiment asks, where do "I" reside?
Presumeably, the reference to DNA was designed to distinquish a version
of myself that is purely physical. It seems ask the classic mind/body
question, where does my consciousness reside? But the MOQ dissolves such
questions and reders them obsolete. To ask that is the same as asking,
where does quality reside? Is it in the object or is it just subjective?
Sound familiar? The MOQ says that quality resides in neither subject nor
object. Quality is more primary than subjects or objects. Quality
(values, morals, consciousness) is the groundstuff of reality. We are
composed of it. To ask where it resides is meaningless from a MOQ
perspective. It was invented to make these questions go away.
Please don't mistake this as an attempt to spoil the party. I find the
deconstruction of the topic a very challenging and fascinating exercise.
David
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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