RISKYBIZ9
Tue, 3 Aug 1999 17:29:48 -0700
ROGER QUANTIFIES HIS POSITION ON REALITY This response is to Robert, Walter, David, Ryan, Platt, Steve, Clark, Horse, etc. The topic is on the nature of reality and indirectly to Robert's version of Cartesian duality. Sorry it takes me so long to respond, but I am busy at work (though I am more of a Corporate Pimp than a Whore...David ;-) ), I type slow, I joined another MOQ site, and my son is with me this summer. Balance is what the MOQ is really about, and I really must practice what I preach. So sorry in advance to those of you that have already read some of my regenerated quotes from you know where. Let me start with David...... DAVID: I can't believe that atoms or particles or waves only exist when humans look at them. I don't think that our perceptions create reality or that reality is an abstraction of experience. Rather experience is fundamental to the nature of reality and has, through the course of evolution, created humans and their perceptions. Subjects and objects don't pop into existence magically because of our experience. I think that view is just some kind of fancy Solipsism. Its impossibly weird. ROGER: I find it impossible to believe that atoms or particles exist absent our models. In fact, modern science came to the same conclusion about 75 years ago. Now I would agree that there is REALITY beyond human perception (but I am not sure). I would not call this REALITY "something", I would call it "being" or "becoming", or like David," the cusp between chaos and matter," or like RMP, "DQ". The attributes become waves or particles or chairs or moons with observation/measurement. These are all intellectual constructs that did not even exist until we created them (Technically it would be proper to say that experience gained quality and created us and them). Ultimate REALITY is unconceptualizable (but not unexperienceable). Science now recognizes this. Physicist James Jeans wrote: "The outstanding achievement of 20th Century physics is.... the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality". Quantum physics finally allowed us to see the conceit and illusion of classical physics. God isn't a mathematician, we are. And what we measure and describe and categorize is mathematical abstractions of the underlying simplicities of reality, it is not the full REALITY itself. It is shadows or echoes of DQ. To quote Sir Arthur Eddington: "We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadopted for penetrating." Or better yet, the "catless" Schroedinger: "The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experiences in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent all and sundry that is near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity....... So, in brief, WE DO NOT BELONG TO THIS MATERIAL WORLD THAT SCIENCE CONSTRUCTS FOR US." (emphasis added) And here is a great one from Max Planck: "It is obvious that the moon and the mathematician use different methods of finding the lunar orbit." Back to David though....... DAVID: What I think that what goes on in the cases of our observations in sub-atomic physics is a matter of "disturbing the universe". The potential particles and waves, prior to our interruption, exist as an "electron cloud". The "parts" of the atom are neither here nor there. The are not yet fully differentiated. They exist at the cusp between chaos (primordial DQ) and inorganic matter. And that existence does not depend on our observing it. Rather it is the "that its attributes are created or realized in the act of measurement". Those attributes, those particles and waves, are created by our observations, which have a way forcing the potential to be realized. WE push the atom to make a "choice" about which way to go. ROGER: Now here David seems much closer to me. The only real difference I have is with the words "we" and "atom" used in the last sentence. I would agree 100% if it was written "Observation (EXPERIENCE) creates us and the atom out of DQ." Now to Walter, who questioned the following of Pirsig's.... PIRSIG: > "The most striking similarity between the Metaphysics of Quality and > Complementarity is that this Quality event corresponds to what Bohr > means by "observation." When the Copenhagen Interpretation > "holds that the unmeasured atom is not real, that its attributes are > created or realized in the act of measurement," (Herbert xiii) it is > saying something very close to the Metaphysics of Quality. The > observation creates the reality." ROGER: I agree completely with RMP and would answer "NO" to Walter's question of whether Heisenberg's uncertainty principle explains the issue away via sub-particle interaction. The uncertainty principle as I understand it states that our conceptualization -- our very knowledge-- of ultimate reality has tradeoffs between position and momentum (among other things). However, Heisenberg was there with Bohr and company when they agreed with the Copenhagen Interpretation. Allow me to quote Dr. Heisenberg: "For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or -- in Plato's sense -- Ideas." They are mental constructs, and even as such are inadequate explanations of even the shadows of true REALITY without complementary definitions. So, to wrap up my position, I would say that ULTIMATE REALITY is unknowable but is experience-able. In fact it is experience itself. One quality experience is that of creating the world of subjects and objects , waves and particles, mathematical models that are simplified yet consistent shadows of the true reality. (Which of your two world views does this put me in Walter? Clearly, I no longer am in Magnus' camp.) However, I am repulsed by the "I am the Entire F*&%#ing Universe" notion. I don't believe it at all. I am derived from this experience too. And this derivation of Pure Experience is not all. I am made of experience, but like Robert I sense that it is greater than me. (And like the old Robert -- but unlike the new -- I think that it Experience or Ultimate Consciousness or DQ is essentially unified). Schroedinger compares "us" to windows. We are composed of the undifferentiated light of DQ. Our goal is to make the window as large as possible. Surely "we" close (I haven't always been open, and the "me" that was open 20 years ago is no more the "me" than you are now), but the light is eternal. But then again, I am sure I am wrong, Roger ****************** "We cannot claim to have discerned more than a very faint glimmer of light at the best..." [J. Jeans] ******************** MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]