From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 12 2004 - 02:06:55 BST
DMB, Mel, et al,
Two cents from dmb:
I think universals and particulars would both be considered static patterns in the MOQ. Universals would be found among social and intellectual level patterns while particulars would be found among organic and inorganic patterns. But they really just boil down to the old mind and matter debates, which are a symptom of SOM's flaws. In the MOQ, I imagine the questions about universals and particulars are pretty much dissolved. Both are considered equally real, although the important distinctions remain.
[Scott replies:]
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...
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. 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?
What is the origin of language?
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")?
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?
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.)
Is mind identical to the brain (or: can there be mind, or consciousness, without a brain)?
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.
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).
(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.)
- Scott
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