Hello Folkai,
This will be an attempt to formulate my response to Magnus' views on the
levels and the static/dynamic split. In particular I have a comment to make
about Quality Events.
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN:
>> IMO the static/dynamic split is the split between discrete and therefore
>> conceptualised entities on the one hand, and the aesthetic continuum on the
>> other. If I am right about this, then the static world is the
>> conceptualised world. IMO this means that the static is the intellectual:
MAGNUS WROTE:
> This is not actually the month for discussing this first split but since it's
> quite important for this month, I'll make a quick detour.
>
> We do have slightly different views on this one, mine is rather that the
> dynamic
> side affects each and every quality event and makes it more or less
> randomized.
> You can never tell exactly the outcome of every single QE even under the most
> rigorously controlled circumstances.
>
> In a reality without DQ, QEs would still happen, but given the same
> preconditions,
> each QE would give exactly the same result. This would mean that such a
> reality
> would move and react almost exactly like a reality with DQ, except that it
> would
> never really evolve. It would just go around in circles, it would never by
> mistake
> bind those two carbon molecules together that enables them to make copies of
> itself.
> It would never cause different types of cells to cooperate and form animals.
>
> Now, the first static world is just as discrete as the second which includes
> DQ.
> The only contribution from DQ is that each QE happens more or less. An atom
> gets
> accellerated slightly more towards another, or a girl tends to like
> strawberries
> slightly less than her twin sister.
>
> So, in my view of the DQ/SQ split, each quality event is discrete, even the
> aesthetic ones. But they're not discrete until after they've happened.
ELEPHANT:
The last point reminds me of what I said about memory: that strictly
speaking all intellectualisations are retrospective. And of course it's
true that events are only discrete after they have happened. This is rather
a reason for thinking that events are intellectualisations, isn't it? Hence
my thinking that QE's are SQ.
As to what the 'contribution' of DQ might be to QE's, this is rather
cart-before-horse isn't it? QE's are SQ intellectualisations aimed at
maximising DQ: so it's QE's which make or do not make a 'contribution' here.
In general I am sceptical of attempts to make sense of Dynamic Quality
itself in terms of the probablistic behaviour of photons or the spin of
electrons etc. Again, that seems to me like a case of the master serving
the slave.
MAGNUS WROTE:
> And no, I don't think all of these are real only because we can
> intellectualize
> them. You can't describe to anyone who's never been able to see what the
> colour
> of green looks like.
ELEPHANT:
True. But neither can you describe what the colour of green looks like to a
cow, and they certainly have seen it. The problem with the 'what it's like'
concept (and Nagel, it's originator re Bats), is the 'it'. I'm sorry, but
imposing the 'it' here really is an intellectualisation, and for creatures
and persons who don't impose the 'it' there really is no 'what it's like' to
describe. So 'what it is like to see the colour green' really is an
intellectualisation, as you will quickly discover when you inspect a rainbow
and try to say exactly where the green ends and the (for instance) turquoise
starts. The imposition of units onto continua is exactly what I think the
SQ/DQ split is all about.
All the best,
Elephant
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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