Hi,
Thanks - seems to me that this is a well argued and timely wake-up [for me at
least] call as to what MoQ should be about.
One or two 'quibbles' [I try to use the work in its least controversial aspect] :
the 'triumph' of Reason I would argue is only in a few albeit influential walks
of life [= society, I guess]. To the rest of the Wetsern world this is just
confusion : the old god of reward in heaven and punishment in hell is pretty much
abolished, science and the era of free nuclear power and cheap petrol and pills
for everything was stillborn - the believers in either are now the cranks [at
least the 'younger' - er, don't kill me too much for that one - believers - my
grandmother, 89, frets very often about the fate of the world where we have given
up belief in heaven and hell : not from a theological perspective, but simply she
fears the social consequences. I say that, 'yeah we've got to learn to face the
consequences and start to really decide things' but to her it's 'yes but people
won't do as their told']. Having had no direct experience of USA for many years
maybe I'm not so sure there. Places I have worked in for a couple of weeks or so
at a time from time to time [e.g South Africa-Jo'burg, Russia-Moscow & StP,
Israel-Tel Aviv, Cote d'Ivoire-Abidjan, Morocco-Casa - all major cities I'll
admit so an 'international' experience in that I was seeing the international
manifestations of Capital and not distinctive local cultures] are pretty much
secular in that they are devoted to consumerism [or obsessed by the lack of
opportunity for consuming] and 'having a good time' - perhaps not surprising as
my job involves installation of financial software, so presumably I wouldn't be
shipped out to countries [= socities?] that are profoundly uninterested in
commercial expansion. So what am I saying : I think it's that there is confusion
in heaven so the earth cannot be guided [to completely garble something that
might once have been worthy of the Yi Jing]. The temple is now television and
the God is commercial success and consumerism [the hidden God is the stock value
of Rupert Murdoch et al., but of course you knew this. Incidentally did you know
that in the British Isles [geographical not political designation] RM is the
proprietor of a tawdry rag called the Sun which has - at least - four press
versions : one for England, one for Scotland, one for Northern Ireland, one for
the Republic of Ireland - the release in England is hysterically anti-Scottish
devolution the Scottish release is pro-devolution, the NI release is pro-Orange
lobby, and needless to say the Eire edition is pro-settlement between 'Catholic'
and 'Protestant' : his domination of the basic dissemination of [dis]information
here - and the market thus related - is so extreme that the British Prime
Minister will go cap-in-hand at the next election to the ex-Australian [there's
patriotism for you] manure peddlar [I am not kidding - his first ever job was
selling sh*t door2door] in order to pander to and drum up support from people who
think that remembering the second letter of the alphabet is being
too-clever-and-pro-European-by-half - gasp - I do try to remember that it is
their sense of social values that is execrable and not the
potential-sources-of-thought themselves :-)]
Apologies, Diana. You were refering to the moral vacuum created by the 'triumph'
of Reason. I'd say that this is due to the fragmentation of a single widely
accepted viewpoint within a lot of given social-cohesive units - call them nation
states, though given the historical arbitrarity of an awful lot of countries [the
fallout of colonialism I am lead to believe] this is seriously open to debate.
The 'triumph' of Reason may have robbed the church of its position as the sole
arbiter of social value - but this is rather due to the effects of intellect in
terms of medicine and commodities - or rather the use of intellect by the social
force of Capitalisation - which has eroded the social moral viewpoint in terms of
the regard of the majority of people giving the pronouncements of the Pope or the
Archbishop of Canterbury much credence. [In all honesty it's a cumulative
process : e.g. the current Pope used to refer to Ireland as being the hope of
Europe as they - I am English and currently live in London, hence the designation
- were still largely priest-ridden in early 1980s in terms of social dominance
but not necessarily belief. Then the Bishop of Galway got caught financing an
ex-mistress-and-child with church money - at this I think most of Ireland was
prepared to say 'dirty old man - not quite as holy as you pretend' and smirk -
this tore at the veil. A little later it was found that the Roman Catholic
Church in Ireland had consistently covered up any investigations into child abuse
by the clergy ... The Irish may still go to mass and confession, but it is now
with no illusion of the priest being in a position of absolute mediator between
them and God - but then I'm not going to slag off someone-else's interpretation
of what-is-holy so long as it involves a questioning mind. And I guess that did
perhaps take press coverage and the triumph of reason.] The Imams seem to be
faring a little 'better' at the moment, but I think we can put that down to
historical divergence.
Diana refers to Clinton with regard to morality, perhaps in the same light [no -
on review she didn't; she merely mentioned it as a
thread-that-'I-don't-wish-to-restart', but this is still worthwhile for the sake
of example, I think]. To me there are three different aspects - [a] the adultery
within his marriage, [b] the shennanigans about production of evidence to an
inquiry, [c] the bombing of several Moslem habitations on the putative evidence
that they might have something to do with a terrorist group on the days before
the inquiry made an announcement. [a] I might disapprove but then it might all
be a workable arrangement with his wife so it's none of my business and although
not a US citizen, I think that they and I have much more to worry about than
where Bill Clinton gets his jollies - but then it can't have helped his daughter
much. [b] yeah, this is technically illegal and if the law is supposed to be
moral, immoral too - but to what extent did the prosecution obey the letter of
the law as opposed to the spirit in order to get a mean-spirited prosecution? [c]
I don't think that many US citizens would respond too well to the argument that
'we blew up your home and killed your kid because the guy who we think is the
Unabomber was seen in your neighborhood last week. PS there's a bad budget
statement tomorrow and we needed to look like we were cracking down on terrorism
to divert attention'. Guess which one I feel most moral outrage about. [I'm
being emotive about it I guess - can we have a straw poll a 1950's Rhetoric
classes in Montana as to the most immoral act of Bill Clinton - I'm prepared to
take other categories? Okay, this would *not* be a representative poll of
humanity I guess, but I think I can guess the outcome and that there will be one
or two % who think different - or maybe I misjudge potential national - and IMO
in this case misguided - loyalty, even in MoQers.]
However, the reintroduction of a single unifying social viewpoint seems at least
superficially somewhat undesirable : er - Hitler, Stalin and to a lesser degree
Thatcher, Putin - need I say more? But then this is social 'leadership' - and
consequently the act of a society which wishes to abnegate any responsiblity as
to what happens, I guess. The ultimate morality of intellect in social affairs
seems to me to be one of participation - or at least protest against the extremes
of the relentless pursuit by Global Capital of [anti-]social goals. The works of
Alvin Toffler and William Gibson do not leave me hopeful. Yeah - I know - I
develop/install software aimed at emerging economies for multinational banks to
get my daily loaf .... I'll debate the [im]morality of doing so on another
occasion.
I'm not trying to drown Diana's point in rhetoric [just an unfortunate personal
trait on my part I guess] but part of her statement is :
<quote>
I don't mean to start these threads again, just to point out that we've
never come to complete agreement on any of them and if the MOQ was
rigorously rational then we should have. After all we can all agree that two
apples plus one apple is three apples.
</quote>
There is an interesting comment about the poet Byron in argument with his wife
said that he wanted to prove that 1+1=3 simply in defiance about what he saw as
the presumption of mathematics and science - she was a formidable and v.
straightlaced mathematician - in demeaning the world with algebra. The daughter
of that union was Ada Lovelace - a definite [dis]union of intellect and passion
herself. In case you didn't know. [That was a complete aside]
Back to the comment - erm. This was my reason for bringing up straw polls about
Clinton's immorality - correction, it was the reason I didn't delete it - as a
thought experiment into Diana's [and hopefully all our] concerns about why can't
we come up with positive and repeatable answers.
The sidestep is that <<MoQ is an intellectual tool which realises that intellect
is not the primary perceptive force but that it arises from that force. The
nature of that force, as it is pre-intellectual, cannot be the subject [or
object - help?] of intellectual examination.>> You can change the words to suit
your preferences of language [perceptive force = DQ, and DQ invents and imagines
things called human beings, amongst others - and by the way I wasn't in George
Lucas mode, just possibly suffering from having a Physics BSc], but that I think
is pretty much as ZAMM has it. And as Diana states the cosy but rationally
unsatisfying conclusion of ZAMM led to the much less cosy Lila. Something like
'why do people murderously disagree on the subject of morality?'.
There is a 'quote' that runs on the lines of 'the Answer to Life, the Universe,
and Everything is ... Forty-Two'. I think I've persisted in that as long as I
need.
Okay. How are we trying to communicate this. Obvious, through the use of the
English language. Unfortunately I am doing it through my use of the English
language, which has subtelties of my culture [English, job - programmer for
financial systems
with a mathematical-scientific education] and temperament [or lack of it] and
therefore cerain words have certain resonances. The question 'how can we place
family within a particlar level of quality' now starts to sound very much like
'what does xyz mean'. There is a dictionary definition - but the Oxford English
Dictionary takes a radically empirical view and says something like 'xyz is used
as part of the English language in the following contexts and its meaning appears
to be so...' It is most certainly not a perscriptive definition of the English
language - the only perscriptive bit about it is that if you don't conform, you
probably won't be understood. And the confirmity isn't the OED or Chambers or
Brewsters - it's the linguistic environment. Of course, the dictionaries now
play a role in the formation and development of the language to the fact that a
definition is recognised in some way anchors the evolution of the sonic/lexical
pattern in question.
Now - there are problems in this. I would argue that mathematics is a language,
just a highly constrained one - devoid, as far as possible, from ambiguity and
user interpretation. So when we say 1+2=3, it is because we have been trained
into recognising that '1', '2', '3', '+', '=' have a very strict usage and *as a
consequence* it becomes *insane* to deny that 1+2=3. Okay there might be
qualification about the objects relating to the numerics but when applied to
objects '= self-conserving patterns of static quality which don't spontaneously
replicate ?', it's pretty self evident. I'm not suggesting that this validity
comes *from* the acceptance, just that we're trained to accept it. With
English, or any other natural language, we always mean just a little bit
different than what we thought from the recipient of the converstaion - and when
the conversation comes back - there is a double twist.
So here is one reason why we don't really agree - each use of the English
language has it's own history and can't be taken to mean the same think [sic.]
from time to time or person to person. Two of the great assumptions of physics
are homogeneity and isotropism - that is the universe will look the same [on
average] from place to place and will look the same independent of which
direction your looking in - when you're next to a big fat planet, it isn't quite
so obvious. I guess that good use of the English [or other] language tries to
accomplish the feats of homogeneity and isotropism. Except perhaps comedy.
So, do we need a mathematical/algebraic MoQ to break down the uncertainty?
This also impinges on what Rick was saying a week or so back about we needed to
produce the same decisions more reliably [great claim of practically all science
is 'reproducibility of results' - it's very hard to knock, except of course that
it becomes v. simple to ignore transient phenomena - indeed quite difficult not
to develop a cultural blind spot about them]. To me again this screams for some
algebra - and any formalistic language can expressed as such [whether it claims
or howls and kicks and screams not to be - any precise formalism is an algebra of
sorts] . Rick states a problem with fomal logic in that is possible to come up
with GIGO. However a MoQ type algebra should be able to produce 'mu' as a valid
[erk - did I really say that] value in perhaps an expanded Boolean notation. So
the question 'is family expressed at an inorganic level' is a perfectly feasible
MoQ algebraic expression and exactly the sort of question you have to be able to
ask to get the reproducibility that at the moment only science can claim to
possess, no matter how superficially risible the conjecture may be.
But perhaps I drift away from the point - do we need such an algebra to make
things better? I tend to the 'change of heart' school - not because I think that
the algebra of MoQ would be useless - it's just I see too many divisions opening
up about the minutiae of notation and all to many jargon enforced cultural immune
barriers being erected. I also think that such an algebra, once invented, it a
double edged sword because of its inevitable tendency to rob our perception with
predefined 'facts'. Cleveland harbour effect. I honestly don't know whether we'd
be better with oir without. If with, we'd still have to carry it in our hearts
'hey - it's only a crank the wheel algebra, useful for churning out difficult
answers in an awkward spot, but for real meaning...'. There are a few
computer-type thought experiments to be invoked here....
The difference between MoQ and new-age, DQ and emotivism... maybe you do just
have to dig it.
All the best
Hamish
PS - incidentals
<Diana's quote>
For example destroying a source of thought may be wrong, but the money and
resources used to keep a
murderer alive could alternatively be used to save the lives of other people, who
are also sources of thought.
</Diana's quote>
In the State of California - forgive me I do not have access the exact quotes
immediately : I will if requested try to hunt them down with extreme prejudice -
but the current cost legal processing of death row in CA would fund the entire
Californian education system. I guess it could be made cheaper by denying the
right to appeals...? And the the cost of keeping the convicted in prison for life
sentences would be substantially less (<10%), presumably as a result of less
urgency with regard to the appeals.
Personally, I just think we owe it to ourselves not to indulge in the luxury of
the death penalty no matter what the crime. We prove our control over the
murderous in ourselves by doing so - nothing really to do with preserving
potential-sources-of-thought although that is an intellectual consideration I
guess. If you don't have those feelings - you're damn lucky.
<Diana's quote>
Also, we seem better at judging historical issues such as the holocaust, rather
than the sort of things that
we ourselves have to face - like my mother's horror at my piercings and tattoos.
</Diana's quote>
Out of interest, and not wishing to offend - how does your mother deal with the
concept of the WWII Holocaust? In a 'socially acceptible moral condemnation'
sense, or er... for want of a less pejorative manner of expressing this question
.. genuine outrage?
You have piercings and tattoos? I gotta leave this forum....;-)
------- End of forwarded message -------
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