Happy Labor Day, Joe -- I'm glad your "burning question" doesn't really concern the center of the sun!
> IMO the burning question of the day for the ancient Greeks was: > How do we know things move? Heraclitus suggested we can’t > step into the same river twice. Socrates insisted he knew nothing > (I am empty) and when he continued asking questions they jailed > him for corrupting the youth and he willingly drank the Hemlock. > Plato changed the question to: How do I know? And proposed a > world of ideas we contact. Aristotle, then proposed a theory of > abstraction which required a split between and mind and body > inasmuch as the mind was capable of abstracting the essence from > a concept and giving it intentional existence in the mind. > > Aquinas followed Aristotle, but at the end of his life declared: > "Everything I have written is as straw." Now motion is still the > question. Do I know in organic motion, (if I do it is somewhat > indefinable), cellular motion of the brain, or electronic motion > of the computer? Plato's question holds the clue. "What do we know?" is the primary epistemological question. What we know is an intellectual interpretation of what we experience. What we experience is the appearance of a dynamic, multiplistic and relational system. The simplest definition for existence is "the appearance of differentiated otherness". But more important than our ability to determine the real nature of experiential reality is a fact lost to most scientific investigators: We are aware of it. Each of us is the cognizant subject of an objective otherness. Unlike data processed by a computer, appearance requires both a subject and an object. > Ham, I prefer the knowledge of quality through organic motion > some of which is indefinable, knowing how to hit a home run. > The cellular motion in the brain is definable, words. The electronic > motion of the computer carrying knowledge is "?" Perhaps, the > knowledge of "Essence" is a connection to electronic motion too > quick for awareness in experience. Hmmn, let's see. "Knowledge of quality through organic motion." That doesn't express anything comprehensible to me. It would have more meaning if you had said: Knowledge of Essence through organic experience. Since knowledge is interpreted from experience, and experience is organically derived, our interpretation is limited by organic perception, which is a very narrow focus. For example, we observe things at a point in time called Now and from a point in space called Here. > IMO the primary metaphysical reality is the evolution of levels, > mechanical and conscious, objective and subjective. To use your analogy, a home run is experienced as a batter hitting the ball, then the ball hurtling toward the outfield, then the batter rounding the bases, and finally the umpire signaling a home run. The "event" that you interpret as a "home run" is actually a series of experienced actions leading up to the knowledge that a home run has been scored. Like all other events in existence, including the totality of an individual's life, it is experienced as a process. When your life on earth is completed your reality will have been a singular event, just like the home run in a baseball game. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Zeno reasoned that an arrow is only in one place during any given instance of its flight. But if it is in only one place, it must be at rest. The arrow must then be at rest at every moment of its flight. Logically, motion is impossible. Ultimate reality will not be found in parsing and categorizing knowledge gleaned from experience, because what we experience is a psycho-organically constructed appearance of otherness. Since the primary source, ultimate reality, cannot logically be an otherness, appearance is a fiction. IMO a metaphysical theory that is anchored to experiential knowledge will never rise above it. --Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
