Bo,
skutvik@online.no wrote:
> Scott and the Lot
> At another stop with a telephone available. I may have a go at the
consciousness issue, and
> what is a better spring-board than this letter?
>
> On 24 Jun 2002 at 19:02, Scott R wrote:
>
>
>>[Scott prev:] If I really were a Zen master, I suppose I'd finish it
with "just sit",
>>or "get back to your koan, fool".
>>But I'm not. Unfortunately, I don't know how to finish it. I have had
>>some notion that physics might be the One, True psychology, that is,
>>that quantum mechanics might be an initial stab at a description (not an
>>explanation) of how the mind measures the non-spatio-temporal, and in
>>doing so, creates a spatio-temporal picture of it, which we call
>>physical reality.
>>
>
>[Bo:] The "consciousness" term isn't used in the above passage, but
"mind" is and what we really
> talk about is mind or awareness: Thinking; having access to reality;
knowing what is
> objectively true, different from the mindless, subjective prison that
the rest of existence is
> trapped in. Responsible ...MORAL!!. Most people (of this group)
equals this value with the
> Intellectual level of the MOQ ..but that's only partly it:
Q-Intellect is the value of the
> knowledge/ignorance DIVIDE. This sounds like splitting hairs, but the
difference is huge.
Before answering this, I decided to have another go at Dan Glover's
SOLAQI pages, and now I see what you are getting at with my careless use
of the term 'mind' above. Putting it more carefully: what I intended
was to suggest that the experiencing of things-moving (which is
abstracted into "space and time") is the creation of things-moving
(Creation out of what is not addressed). That is, I did not mean to
imply that the "mind" of SOM is the agent. Barfield, being the clever
fellow he is, made up a word for it: figuration, rather than use a
loaded word like I did.
>
>
>[Bo:] NOTA BENE.
> Here I part company with most of the discussers who believe that S/O
is an intellectual
> pattern that can be replaced by another (better) one, but I can't for
the life of me understand
> what is intellect's (value) except for the S/O, and how it can mend
itself in such a
> fundamental way. It is as if LIFE suddenly would become DEATH. I have
asked for a
> definition of it, but none such has been presented without vague
suggestions about "self-
> reflection" and "thinking" and such which are the very halfs of the
"consciousness" variants
> mentioned above ...which is playing straight into the hands of
Intellect.
> end of NB
I will argue with this below.
>
>[Bo:] So my conclusion is that "consciousness/awareness/" along with
their counterparts are
> "poison" used in a MOQ context because they are off-shoots of
Intellect's mind/matter root.
> As said a thousand times: All creatures sleep and waking up must be
to a reality different
> from oblivion. When a fish wakes up it's to a biological reality, and
when we wake up it is to
> the whole range of realities values, but even Intellect is a mere
Q-level and no "God's Eye"
> stance.
Here I disagree because I think there is value in such concepts as "The
Self-Aware Universe" (title of Amit Goswami's book). I see the potential
for poisoning, but I think if one is to do metaphysics, one can't avoid
the words. One might have to bend over backwards, like Franklin
Merrell-Wolff did by naming his book "The Philosophy of
Consciousness-Without-an-Object".
One reason to do so is that if one leaves out the awareness factor in
experiencing, then "experiencing" can just be reduced to "happening".
And if that happens, then the MoQ can be charged with vapidity: if one
doesn't ascribe some kind of je ne sais quoi to "Quality", something
more like "consciousness/awareness/elan vital" than "atoms moving in a
void" then there is no real distinction between "everything happens
because of Quality" from "everything happens because it does".
Also, it is the awareness factor that tells me that my experiencing is
not reducible to a mechanical process.
>
> (Scott went on)
>
>>There are a number of objections to this, one being
>>that it is purely speculative (and, as Wilber notes, what if QM gets
>>overthrown by the next revolution in physics?). Also, it only describes
>>(if it does) our awareness of the inorganic.
>>
>
>[Bo:] Quantum Mech. is Intellect's outmost fringe (where it borders on
to DQ) which is the reason
> for its "irrational" conclusions, but I don't think QM will be
overthrown by any new revolution
> in physics - rather it will be the physics of the next development
beyond Intellect.
Except that there is the incompatibility between QM and General
Relativity, so something will change. Of course, Aspect's experiments
won't be lost, so whatever might come up as a successor to QM will have
to be at least as "irrational" (to SOM that is).
>
>
>>Another is that it doesn't
>>provide a clue to why we are in complete ignorance of the
>>non-spatio-temporal. And so on. Maybe it's just a good metaphor.
>>
>
> Don't become too subtle dear Scott :-)
How else can I exercise plausible deniability :-)
Anyway, on to the debate.
I mentioned several times that I consider mathematics to be non-SOL, but
I would consider it to be Q-Intellect, so I am saying that that is a
counter-example to SOLAQI. However, I do not mean to imply that SOL can
be overcome, or even that it is desirable that it be overcome, at least
within our limited horizon. As mentioned, Barfield uses the term
alpha-thinking, and it appears to be the exact equivalent of
Subject-Object Thinking as you have used it: it is thinking about a set
of patterns, and in doing so creates a new pattern (if original), one on
the intellectual level. It is weaving an intellectual pattern around and
among other patterns. No need to posit the independent existence of
anything. We can call it an increase in knowledge if we find that the
patterns being woven together are now experienced in a better way.
But SOM should be overcome, and overcoming SOM means rethinking our
alpha-thinking so that we do not assume it is done by an independently
existing subject contemplating independently existing objects.
Barfield made up the term "beta-thinking" for thinking about thinking.
It is not a different kind of thinking from alpha-thinking, just
differentiated by the particular set of patterns being thought about,
namely, the patterns of intellect. So it is not a new level. (But maybe
it can become one. Georg Kuhlewind (elaborating on Rudolf Steiner's
philosophy) gives exercises in thinking -- these exercises being a form
of meditation -- which he claims can become a non-S/O thinking. But I
digress.)
So SOL is intellectual patterning where there is one pattern which we
can call internal, and the others are external, while mathematics is an
intellectual patterning where there is just an internal pattern.
Beta-thinking is intellectual patterning where the other patterns are
also intellectual patterns.
(I don't think that the internal/external distinction is a SOM
resurrection. Thinking (and feeling and willing) are internal. Sensing
is external. The difference is that internal patterns seem to be
produced by me, and external patterns seem not to be. One can (and I do)
question that seeming -- that it was not always so, and need not always
be, but now that is how it is.)
Anyway, back to mathematics. It is not SOT because there are no objects
outside the mathematics for it to be about. So my question is, can
metaphysics, or at least beta-thinking, be done in the same way? To do
so requires shifting the semantic theory we bring to bear on what we are
doing. Alpha-thinking typically presupposes correspondence semantics.
Our thought patterns are to correspond to the patterns they are about.
Instead, if we can think of alpha-thinking as weaving an intellectual
pattern around and among other patterns, connecting them together, then
what we are doing is akin to art: taking what's around us and putting it
together in novel ways. Meanwhile, beta-thinking becomes more like
mathematics since there is no need to go outside the internal pattern at
all. George Spencer Brown points out that mathematics uses an injunctive
semantics, not a correspondence one. That is, if I follow a proof of a
theorem, I am being instructed on how to think that theorem, to
experience how it is inherent in the axioms. I would like to think that
metaphysics could be done in a similar way. I don't mean that it could
be done by finding a set of axioms, or to use proofs. Rather, that it is
seen as, simply, creating intellectual patterns. Which is why I said a
while back that metaphysical statements should be thought of as being
preceded by "I invite you to think that ..." rather than "It is true
that ...".
Now all is left is to figure out why some patterns are more inviting
(have higher quality) than others, without saying "because they more
closely approximate reality". I think the answer is: short term, because
they help us become better at creating intellectual patterns (and
detaching ourselves from social ones), long term, because they provide
the basis for moving on to the next level, whatever that might be.
Sorry for the length of this,
- Scott
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