Replying to Arne et al.,
Arne Kjellman wrote (among other things):
"...You must not think you, anyone else, or science can know what is
“out
there” – without the use of a mind (experiential mind) – specifically
your
own. This is why information has no mind-independent existence –
information
is mind-dependent and depends on your personal experience. This is
why we
have to join in consensus and “tune” our minds to allow for
communication.
We do this by learning and coexistence – and by the use of languages
(models). We are unable to know what “really goes on out there” by
direct
evidence. This is why we should prefer to choose monism since “out
there”
does not exist in a monistic science – all you know is experience.
And what
you cannot experience you cannot know – and neither speak of."
What I am about to say today I'll probably regret tomorrow, but I've
been trying to "experience the now" and get beyond my dualistic
future-versus-past polarity. I don't expect popular support for my POV
—a naive biologist's POV—but it here goes anyway.
I wish I could learn enough about the natural laws of information to
overcome my suspicion that the brave field of ontology is a
philosophical excuse for worshiping the sainted "being"—the
penultimate expression of the Cartesian/Freudian stove-ego— the
"experience" experienced by intellectuals who can't see the forest
for the trees. I wonder if most ontologists are actually
romanticists at heart. Newton saw the forest, though, and he didn't
really need to have an experience with an apple, as the romantic
experientialists claim he did, to explain precisely how local gravity
works. There may be apples falling out of trees on Tralfamadore,
and, if so, they would fall with a force that can be described
universally as F = G(mm'/r^2), whether or not Newton or I actually
"experience" them falling. If this were not true then why do they
call it the "universal law of gravitation"? Doesn't science give us
an objectivity about reality that overcomes the subjectivity of a
"personal-awareness experience"? I think it trumps the need for a
personal MIndGod sitting on our shoulders. Newton's Law is not just
an experience of the mind; it happens all over the place, mind or non-
mind. That's why they call it a "natural law," isn't it?
I'm sure, however, there are plenty of those who insist that the mind-
scape, which is the playground of science, is an ontological
problem. One might say in a parallel way that without a mirror you
cannot see your image, even though you know you have one; so then the
emphasis is disproportionately thrust upon the mirror. Are they
perhaps looking into a mirror and asking what the mirror would see if
they were not there looking into it? Is the problem of ontological
recursivity that confounding? My kind of dualism needs to
differentiate my perceived stove-ego experience from my learned
perspectives—I'll call it knowledge—of what nature is really all
about. When I do this I feel as though I am practicing science, and
my Occam's razor seems to want to trim off this excess bother over
the business of being a being and being properly imprisoned by the
Antropic Principle.
I've been fighting the experientialists—call them existentialists,
too, if you like—ever since Ram Das insisted that there is no
temporal reality, only the NOW, and that I need to give up my
shameful dualism to be one with the "experience" of it all. We even
had exercises for replacing invalid thoughts about reality with truer
feelings that must be "experienced" to be valid. You can't have a
REAL feeling, of course, because that might qualify as thinking,
perish the thought.
Have you examined the principles of ontology closely enough to
"experience" the recursive nature of "being" as something other than
a philosophical limitation? Once again, I don't see why science
doesn't buy us REAL objectivity as a way out of this ontological
dilemma.
Of course you will say that the human mind is the only true arbiter
of information, all of which is experiential. To that I might reply
that genes—exactly digital in their non-experiential reality—
communicate all sorts of information, whether or not an ontologist is
there to experience them doing it.
I'll conclude my thoughts here, knowing full well that my "knowing"
is not the kind of knowing that Arne et al. would qualify as true
knowing, since I don't always need to have an ontological experience
to appreciate my kind of reality. In my kind of reality, genes send
and receive information without the need for an ontological
principle. And science, to me, get us around that troublesome mirror
so we can actually see what's happening on the other side.
That's my $0.02 for the week. Thanks for your kind indulgence.
—Richard
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