Roger and Squad
I will "clone" Platt Holden's generous remark and direct it to you:
"Every once in awhile (sadly, not often enough) a post arrives
that marks a milestone in the history of the Lila Squad.
Such IMHO was Roger's post of Feb. 10 1999."
You have a talent for compressing our messages and summing
up the discussion. I think we here already have a skeleton of a MOQ
understanding of the self/identity issue. At least are the 3 points
and the list of objections underneath a useful template to measure
agreements or objections against from now on.
On Wed, 10 Feb you wrote:
snip....
> 1) As Pirsig explains on p178, you are a collection of patterns. In
> scientific terms, according to autopoiesis, or the "self forming" theory of
> life, you are a system. Life is defined by an organized circular feedback
> loop that is open to energy and matter. It selectively couples the pattern
> and the universe. Direct experience creates and changes the pattern and the
> universe. Destroy the pattern and you kill the life.
> If all we are is patterns, then to copy all the patterns is to duplicate us.
> For info on the self forming theory of life, go to
> http://www.informatik.umu.se/~rwhit/AT.html
> better yet, read Capra's "Web Of Life". Conceptually, it is completely
> consistent with the MOQ.
> 2) Your cells regenerate constantly - as often as monthly for major organs.
> Your organization system is a self-forming cloning machine. It just isn't
> instantaneous.
> 3) Consciousness is an abstract objectification of the self. As RMP states
> on p179, the mind is an intellectual pattern formed from social patterns, out
> of biological, out of inorganic. You are not your body or your synapses. In
> fact, these are actually intellectual abstracts of value patterns too. If you
> can duplicate these intellectual patterns, why can't you duplicate the "self"
> intellectual pattern? You can!
> Now for the objections that have arisen
...snip
If I understand Roger correctly there is no disagreement,
particularly do I like number 4 as it (in the passing) affirms my
SOLAQI (SO logic as Q-Intellect) idea. Number 6. about the dynamic
part I see the same way: DQ engulfs all existence and will
immediately create a new self/identity/consciousness/.....or "I" as
far as the perfect clone issue is concerned.
What goes for us less than perfect ones in our day by day and cell by
cell cloning (BTW. It was long believed that the brain did not
renew itself, but now that is changed. If you only wait long enough
all theories change!) is the same process. In an earlier post to Rob
Stillwell I suggested that experience can be seen as identity, i.e.
an inorganic "I", a biological "I" and so on. Perhaps this is too
ambiguous and evokes the dreaded "aware atom" idea again, so I'll
return to the position that self as we understand it is Intellect's
invention = awareness of self as different from other (society). Or
in Roger's words:
> The self is an objectified, or subjectified, intellectual abstraction.
Well, what do you - ALL - think? As I see it we have two main
courses. One is Diana's self as a convergence of all levels values,
the other is Roger's self as an intellectual abstraction. I back
Diana in a very general way (I don't think that all levels can be
self-centred simultaneously, but the infinitesimal time lapse is not
noticed). For a more easily defendable position I go for Roger's.
Does it make sense or is the "unity of consciousness" still an
obstacle to a MOQ "self"?
Bodvar.
PS. Keith's last post (11 Feb.) seems to agree generally with Roger
...in addition to being a splendid summing up of the SOM problems
solved by the MOQ. It ended thus:
> In summary, it seems to me that the MOQ does not preclude the possibility
> of teleportation, and, in fact, provides a welcoming metaphysical basis for
> the issue. By rejecting the mind/matter dualism in favor of the concept of
> patterns, it removes the most common objections to teleportation--the
> irreproducible, non-material, human 'soul' or body-independent 'mind'.
> Whether or not such a system can actually be made is a scientific
> consideration, but at first pass, I don't see a pre-emptive metaphysical
> objection to it.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
