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Hi,
response-ish to Jonatahan Marder, Richard Budd and other stuff thorwn in.
I'll *try* to be non-rambly for once.
I'm not sure that 'mu' means shrug-shoulders-and-go-away. It simply means
that the question cannot be answered within the premises of the question
posited. Which I guess in the context of Zen training means
go-and-work-on-your-ontology-little-student. And other cultures might say
that it means that the question can't be answered. The position that it
can't be answered may just be because the limitations of the precepts of
that culture is of course a manifestation of insanity.
So yes, "is quality S or O?" The answer is mu. The expansion is that Q
encompasses and gives rise to S and O. Which from an S&O point of view is
ridiculous if not quite mu. If you constructed an algebra which could only
construct concepts in terms of SOM, Q would be risible. Fortunately our
existence and language don't quite tie us down to such an extent [q.v.
Orwell's '1984' and Newspeak] and the open-endedness can be sufficient to
prise open the conceptual barriers. In the context of Zen, koans are this
method, I guess. In the much more freewheeling western culture you need
books like ZAMM and Lila and www.moq.org to prise the lid off the
metaphysical cookie jar, 'cos we're not too hot on pithy aphorisms anymore.
Why? - because language still is able to transcend both 'rationality' and
'emotivism' I guess.
So I'll say - yes the whole proposition is a bit mu, but we can get around a
lot of this.
I think that the emotion is separate from the mental process associated with
reasoning has been pretty much rubbished from the point of view of many
contributions. The idea that rationality is separate from emotion is a
post-hoc evaluation to try to get full marks from teacher/peers. The whole
'emotivism' concept is perjorative designed to exclude 'people who don't
think our way'. Well, the best scientists for Capital are precisely those
who don't think in terms of the broader picture about the influence of e.g.
GM crops, and those who restrict themselves to considerations of biochemical
manipulation of cellular evolution. Hence the recent editorial comment in
New Scientist magazine [sorry date and issue available on request - doing it
off top of head and not available at this instant] which castigated HRH
Charles Windsor-Mountbatten for trying to urge scientists to be more
responsible : New Scientist's response was in a nutshell "science is pure
intellectual research and the side effects are all commerce's fault". This
was 'rational science' reaction to 'woolly minded emotivism'.
Okay, I think we pretty much realise that rationalism is a rhetorical stance
designed to pander to the preconceptions of current culture - and we have
pretty much within the contexts of this discussion group put paid to said
preconceptions. I.e. 'emotion' is as part and parcel of perception as
'reason'. Indeed, the 'selflessness' of reason belongs to the quality that
exists before the concept of self gets in the way. The problems arise in
the 'rational' world view constructed where the only reasoning gets done by
emotional egos in a material world.
So much so good. This can be 'hey there's a point' or 'namby-pamby'
depending on initial starting point et al. by the recipient of 'the
message'.
I believe that the acid test posited by Rick at the beginning of this
month's discussion was how can we 'objectively' [i.e. consistently and
independently] deal with the questions posed by MoQ. [And yes - touche,
Rick - you are quite right Lila was written to try to help distinguish
between DQ and quality-within-ego and witin other things]. My answers were
somewhat casuistic in that I doubted the possibility of a method which could
be accepted as producing such answers. My use of the word 'algebra' was not
meant to be derogatory, just that any formal system can end up being
described symbolically and computationally - and this is what I think would
be required by such a consistent and independent approach. This is in the
same way that physics mediates with mathematics via the concepts of energy,
distance... and the measurement [conversion between numeric and physical
aspects] of such properties, a Q-algebra would have to deal with the
interaction between DQ and SQ, and the encompassing of one level of SQ by
another. And, er yes, such an answer might yield e.g. "0.61" and that would
have to mean e.g. that "the encompassing of level-a by level-b has its
advantages but cannot be entirely said to be 'good'" with various factors
thrown in as to the open-endedness of the system [= responsiveness to DQ
and its ability to remain intact and responsive after responses to said DQ].
It is quite simply founding a new branch to mathematics - or in all
likelyhood expanding upon one long forgotten. In case this rankles, such
techniques are championed by 'fuzzy logic' which is an attempt to get maths
[by expansion of boolean logic] to work with the vagaries of social morality
amongst other things.
OK. So at the moment we haven't such a mathematical approach I guess, and
*this is what it would take* to get the consistency requested [? - apologies
if I am incorrect in this assumption about you] by Rick. It would also take
a lot of expansion from the current 4level MoQ - perhaps by the mediation of
said maths - to get something that was at least internally consistent and
not just by a few clever words, i.e. to describe e.g. where one level was
spawning the sort of behaviour that *could* eventually dominate it as a
higher level.
The price? I guess we kill the romance.
The reward? Invitation onto the chat-show circuit gravy train for life.
Regards, Hamish
------- End of forwarded message -------
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