DM: I am suggesting we say public/private for the simple distinction as to what can be observed or is observed in common and what is not. What the content of my cupboard happens to be may only be known to me. Or what my opionion of George Bush is may be private and not public. I amsimply suggesting we don't start thinking or describing this as about two separate esseneces called subjects and objects.
[Krimel] This is helpful to me in understand what the big brouhaha is all about. What you describe above is not at all how I see this issue regardless of what terms are applied. For example, the contents of your cupboard are private to you because currently only you can see them. They are not in principle inaccessible to me. I am referring to the fact that my hand is publicly observable by both of us and yet my perception of my hand is unique to me. I know about the unpleasant sensation of the hang nail on my ring finger. You know only about my slovenly grooming habits. If my hand were severed, then I would have the same relationship to it that any other observer would have. Until such time my perception of my hand is radically different. By private events or subjectivity I mean the events unique to my nervous system. If I were to peer into your cupboard then we would share certain aspects of that experience in common we could reach certain intersubjective agreements about the contents. There is a degree of overlap and this shared subset I would term objective or public. There remain of course elements of the experience that are unique to each of us and can not be shared; my emotional response to your choice of cuisine, your satisfaction in the orderly arrangement of the canned goods. Private knowledge or subjective awareness is precisely the bit of knowledge acquired by the color expert Mary in Frank Jackson's famous thought experiment. [DM] Patterns or SQ can move between these different spheresof experience. I can dream up a design for a house privately in my thoughts and it can become publicif I build it. The secret password to get into the bank vaught nay be sent to me by email, but once I have read it and destroyed the email the password is private to my mind (or brain if you can read it off my brain structure with the right can of probe, this may not ever be possible though). So I am not saying what you suggested. [Krimel] Again your design and your password are currently private and can in principle be made public. Not so your pride in the creativity of your design or your smugness at needing a bank vault. I will decline to comment on your confidence that anything sent via e-mail can be considered in any sense private. [DM] SQ is seen on all levels, the levels interact, and SQ is more or less universal or local. If we have levels we do not need to have two distinct essences, as Pirsig implies, that would see levels one and two as objective and material, and three and four as subjective and non-material. There is though something here that the MOQ misses about local and less local SQ, private-individual and public-common. [Krimel] Pirsig's conception works to the extent that he is claims that change and stasis are common to both forms of understanding, subjective and objective. This makes the study of the interplay of flux and constancy primary in either realm. This is also true of "levels" however they are conceived. 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/
