From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Jun 20 2005 - 10:25:29 BST
Hi Matt ...Mike?
On 16 June Matt Kundert wrote:
> No, Bo, I just don't think you are reading me right. "Mind" may be
> part of the "mind/matter dualism," but I don't think "'mind'"
> necessarily is. Philosophers use scare quotes when (among other
> things) they want to warn people that the term contained is one they
> don't want to use, are about to deconstruct, and/or about to
> redescribe. When philosophers find problematic terms that contain
> deep-seated intuitions and that they want to make less problematic,
> they redescribe the term to get rid of the problems, which does one
> of two things to the intuitions: recommends we get rid of them
> because we can live without them or recommends we can keep them
> without the accompanied problems. As I said to Scott a day ago, I
> do think there is something about the "mind" that needs keeping,
> roughly the sense of what makes us individual, continuous persons.
About a need for the "mind". Yes, and the MOQ keeps it as its
highest static value; the mind/matter duality. If this don't suffice
see later.
> For instance, I wrote
> out my entire response to you two days ago, but do to a computer
> glitch, lost the whole thing. What I'm writing now is a pale
> reflection of my original response, but the continuity between the
> two is there. What I wrote existed somewhere and its continuity
> between there and here is in what we vulgarly call the "mind" and is
> what Pirsigians call a static intellectual pattern.
I agree, but one point though. "What Pirsigeans call a static
pattern". Maybe the Pirsigeans, but a MOQist would stress that
the mind/matter dualism is intellect. Mind alone is something
else. In a recent post to Platt I tried to outline how the notion of a
such an entity came to be. See later.
> Unless you want to toss out that notion completely, which I
> currently can't imagine is possible, you need to use "mind" (as a
> placeholder for those intuitions you're keeping) in your process of
> redescription or else you won't be able to make the translation work
> because there will be no reference to the old intuitions. When you
> keep on like this, Bo, calling everybody who even mentions the word
> "mind" a subjectivist, it just makes me think more and more that DMB
> is right, that you're just mistakenly reading everybody as a
> subjectivist already.
I'm reading those who talk like subjectivists as subjectivists. I will
eventually try to address Paul (again) about the "common sense"
issue. DMB has gone fishing.
> The issue at hand is what _you_ translate "mind" into in the
> SOL-MoQ, because presumably that would provide the clue as to where
> the SOL-MoQ is "contained."
> Bo said:
> If anything uttered by language are ideas, we certainly are
> idealists and idealism rules, but even the most rabid idealists
> shies this linguistic "black hole" and postulate something that
> language reflects ...which makes idealism part of the SOM - or of
> the intellectual level!
> Matt:
> I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but it is certainly
> not the case that (all) idealists postulate that language reflects
> something. Its the exact point of idealism that there's very little
> use in saying that language or ideas reflect anything because we'd
> never know what it is because all we have are the reflections
> (language/ideas).
>
> Bo said:
> ... I don't postulate "a sharp divide" between a metaphysics and
> reality. I say that the MOQ is the Quality Reality. Look. SOM was
> the S/O reality and the first move by Pirsig was to point to it,
> split it from reality, and the first reactions (from the few who
> noticed) were to deny a SOM ...which proves my point: it WAS reality
> itself. The S/O reality.
Matt said:
If I understand your reasoning about the SOL-MoQ, it
looks something like this: SOM used to be the truth of us.
We used to exist in the SOM-Reality. But the creation of
the MoQ has made it possible to move from one reality,
the SOM-Reality, to another, the Quality-Reality. When
making that switch, from SOM-Reality to Quality-Reality,
we are literally entering a new reality. That new reality is
the SOL-MoQ. The SOL-MoQ is simply short-hand for all
the machinations we make in our reality, the Quality-
Reality, and the SOL-MoQ is the correct interpretation of
our new reality.
I had to "indent" this because this is just spot on. I could not have
formulated it better myself (in my own language)
> The question I will continue to press is, "What is the SOL-MoQ?
> Where is it?" Why would I press it if I just answered it with,
> "'Where' isn't the right word because the SOL-MoQ is everywhere
> because it is everything, all of reality"? Well, you first answered
> it by saying that a "theory does not reside anywhere within itself,"
> which I said doesn't make any sense when the theory in question is a
> theory of reality. You then claim that you don't make any "sharp
> divide" betwen theory and reality, which looks like a repeal of your
> first response, but makes sense of your earlier remarks that "a
> theory changes the element of reality it treats" and that because
> the MoQ is a general theory of reality it "consequently changes
> EVERYTHING." But if you take back your first response, that SOL-MoQ
> doesn't have to be "contained" in your picture of reality because
> theories don't contain themselves, how does that make sense if your
> theory of reality is about all of reality? Wouldn't that include
> theories? If the SOL-MoQ is reality, is the Quality-Reality, the
> new reality we live in having transcended or replaced the
> SOM-Reality, why wouldn't it contain itself?
Why this harping on where things are? As earlier shown the S/O
metaphysics wasn't bothered with this question because on-one
knew of any SOM. Now that it is "demasked", if we turn to it and
ask where it is within itself. Well, what would you suggest?
> In effect, what are you doing right now, writing the words you do,
> thinking about the MoQ, arguing for your interpretation of the
> correct reality, the SOL-MoQ? What are you doing, what is being
> created? You can't be arguing for reality itself, as a whole,
> because reality doesn't need your help. Reality does just fine
> existing without your help. What you're trying to do is change our
> reality, our interpretation of reality. But how are you doing it?
> You seem to have disarmed yourself.
As said I earlier outlined to Platt how the notion of an realm
called mind developed (where symbols - in the silent language
called 'thoughts' - are manipulated) as different from a world out
there. The neural RAM "cache" where all creatures (above some
level) can store experience (and re-assess it as images) was -
with the coming of language - invaded by it. By the development
sketched this developed into "thoughts" and the idea of a mind
and by and by a metaphysics of two realms.
This capacity originating in biology is what is behind "intelligence"
(the ability to learn and adapt to new challenges) and what most
people of this discussion identifies with Q-intellect (sorry to say
Pirsig too) and have created this infernal mess of the great MOQ.
If you now ask " Is it here that all theories including the MOQ
are?" ...be my guest. It's the same as asking if they are "in"
language. We better drop that.
See next instalment
Bo
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jun 20 2005 - 10:30:02 BST