Anders Nielsen (joshu@diku.dk)
Wed, 5 Nov 1997 18:42:45 +0100
> I'd like to add that you may see where I'm going with the title. You
> said DQ can be related to noumena, but I didnt' think so, at least not
> entirely. Perhaps you thought that because of the title? What I'm
> referring to in the title is the idea that just as materialists,
> rationalists, Platonists, etc., posit an underlying essence which is
> this fictional noumena, the underlying undefined essence of reality in
> MOQ terms is Dynamic Quality. DQ *can* be compared to the noumenon to
> which all static values would be phenomena. Although it isn't a
> necessity, I made the title that way to have some SOM-land comparison
> for Quality, since SOM thinkers find it difficult to comprehend what
> Quality is. The difference here is that in SOM terms there is a
> plenitude of noumena. There are many many 'things' that can have
> essences after all. But in MOQ terms, there is one underlying noumena,
> Quality. Another difference is that the phenomena, static values, are
> intellectualized mental constructs. SOM makes them the real part of
> reality.
Now that we've seen the word Noumenon a couple of times without any
definitions I thought I'd look it up in a dictionary (Lademann's
Fremmedordbog):
Noumenon:
"(greek) That which has entered the mind without going through senses"
(senses in the meaning smell,hearing,sight,etc..)
(in danish: "(gr.) hvad er opstået i tanken uden sansernes medvirken")
So when you take away the sensory attributes of a dinner table, it's
colour, the sound it makes when you tap it, how it feels, you're left with
it's noumenon.
I think many other contemporary philosophers (Hume, Kant) called it the
object's "substance" rather than "noumenon" (in fact I've never heard that
used before).
But as soon became apparent there is nothing left of an object when you
remove the sensory attributes, and thus was born empiricism.
I don't think you can equate Noumenon with Dynamic Quality.
It's more like the opposite.
It's rather a postulate that there is something in the world that is not
Quality, but is still the primary substance of the world. (not a
particularily wideheld belief I might add)
[..]
> In summary:
> 1) How Quality differs from noumena: In the MOQ framework, reality is
> united by one underlying essence (noumenon), called Dynamic Quality,
> while in SOM there is a plenitude and no noumenon is absolute.
perhaps you just picked a bad word?
> 2) How Quality compares to noumena: DQ is objective (as any noumenon
> is), but we intellectualize to produce many static value versions.
DQ can't very well be objective...Not in any usual sense of the word
objective, anyway.
-Anders
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