David Buchanan wrote on Sun, 24 Jan 1999
> Bodvar, Maggie and the gang:
> I was grateful for Bodvar's Peirce contribution and Maggie's material on
> the evolution of cognitive functions. I've found a paper on the net that
> might suffice as a small payback for my gratitude. I hope you'll all
> take a look at it and share your thoughts.
> http://www.cop.com/cmtu3htm.html
> You'll find a paper titled ""Implications of a Fundamental
> Consciousness". It was presented just last May at a "Towards a science
> of Consciousness" conference in Tucson. The footnotes include a few
> thinkers we've discussed here recently. The paper is based on the ideas
> of Gregory Bateson, David Chalmers, Aldous Huxley, William James, Ervin
> Lazlo, Bertrand Russell, Francisco Varlea and Ken Wilber, among others.
> The thesis is not exactly MOQ, but you'll find the similarities to be
> very obvious. Please, please, please check it out and help me start a
> new thread. Its very exciting stuff !!! Its only about ten pages of
> text and can be read over a long lunch.
Hi David and Group..
The long lunch became dinner before I was through with the article,
but it was worth it. I alternated between my usual: "It's almost it,
but not quite" and "d..it, this is it!!". For Instance on page 5 the
author cites the mathematician Rudy Rucker saying:
> It is now considered reasonable to say that, at the deepest, most
> fundamental level, our world is made of information....For postmodern
> people, reality is a pattern of information, a pattern of fact space.
"Information the basic 'stuff' of the world, and patterns of
information!!!!!" Is it possible to get closer? If Copthorne
Macdonald (or Rucker) had gone on to say: "All right everything is
information - not subject and objects - lets construct an Information
Metaphysics: There is a Dynamic Information out of which a series of
static Information levels have formed, the fist one Static Inorganic
Information....and so on". Well, then we would have had a
Darwin-Wallace situation on our hands.
I'm not butting lightly, I am amazed over Macdonald's
efforts to close the mental-physical gap, but as it is his starting
point there is no way to get rid of it. On page 2 in section II
"Primal Reality: Physical-Only or Mental Physical" he rejects the
first alternative as impossible, and goes on to examine the second.
No ridicule, but I have seen these exercises before: claiming that
the mind-matter division is false yet....and the next moment deep in
the S-O quicksand.
In my essay I point to the Danish mystic Martinus who postulates
an objective reality and two kinds of subjectivity: an objective
and a subjective one, and I spot the same trinity on page
4 in the physical-mental and algorithmic aspects. Pirsig does away
with the problem by - first - identifying the SOM (mental-physical)
as one metaphysics that can be replaced by another, and presenting
his new MOQ wherein the first static level CAN BE SEEN as
"matter" and the top level as "mind" of SOM. What creates the
mental-physical riddle is that between those two there are no direct
connection except over the Organic and Social bridges.
The tragedy is that no effort from our side will bring people like
Macdonald to see the elegance of the MOQ. The above sounds so learned
and complicated and can produce several doctorate degrees. Who
wants a child coming along demonstrating how the reality "manual" can
be folded to show a simple assembly (remember the scene with Chris at
DeWeese's house in ZAMM?). And yet - some day......the pressure is
mounting.
Thanks David for informing us about this piece, it is well worth
studying and discussing.
Bodvar
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