DM: Maybe Ham is saying that what is changing and subject to time can only be made sense of in the context of a greater whole (perhaps only a conceptual whole or maybe more)where everything that can become actual is already possible.
[Krimel] One could as easily say that possibility is created by actuality. Actuality limits even defines possibility. It is not possible in this actuality to throw oneself at the ground and miss. [DM] Where everything is already possible there would be no time. We understand the actual as the coming and going of what is possible in a realm with location/space and order/time. Our understanding of the actual only makes sense through our conception of this larger whole where everything possible is available as a source to populate the finite realm/sphere of the actual. [Krimel] It seems to me that possibility disappears with out time. Without time nothing is possible. Ham seems to be trying to resurrect possibility by calling it potentiality. He does not seem to regard the possibility of actualization as a limiting factor. I don't think 'potential' that can never be actualized does not and can not matter. Even here without time there is no potential either. If you want to say the time is potential that would at least be interesting. There is quite enough room to speculate as to what will actualize. What is the advantage of leaving the door open to what cannot? [DM] Is evolution a bridge between the possible and the actual, touching at certain points (& them moving on), making a certain subset of the possible actual at any given time and place. [Krimel] Yes, in this way evolution and biology study the very process of actualization and what constrains possibility in living things. [DM] The 'everything that is possible' sphere never changes, how could it? There it sat at the big bang waiting to populate our cosmos, there it sits now unchanged and nowhere and immaterial, populating the actual with its current needs, and accepting the trash patterns that are no longer wanted. Such is the becoming and begoing of patterns. The source is nothing, vast enough to create and absorb any number of universes. [Krimel] Again it seems to me that actualization is always creating and destroying possibility. No account of possibility can ignore actuality. This line of thinking seems a bit like Whitehead's process philosophy. As translated into process theology it holds that what you call possibility and Ham calls potentiality is God's primordial nature. What we are all calling actualization is God's consequent nature. Thus God partakes, is directly involved and changes through his consequent nature. [DM] Such is DQ, quite incomprehensible as Ham seems to prove on a daily basis. Is DQ so vast? Well it never seems to fail us and let us down, the DQ just keeps coming does it not? The awesomeness of DQ is actually something we can experience as the inconceivability of our finite cosmos. [Krimel] I would say Quality is to be left as undefined because it is impossible to specify what will actualize by looking a possibility. Whitehead would say that actuality occurs as process. Process is the interplay of static and dynamic qualities. In my philosophy I define it as Shit Happens. Static Shit in the dynamic process of happening. [DM] Kant's sublime you might say. For me, metaphysics is poetry for those who really do make an effort to examine and make sense of experience. I don't like talk of the logic and reason of metaphysics as if we could do without experience to give us the problems that our metaphysical-poetry is trying to express. [Krimel] This would account for your attraction to the descriptions of Lacan and Zizic. But I think the essence if poetry is brevity. Lots of information packed into few words. Fog creeping in on little cat's feet. It would seem then that philosophy it the opposite of poetry if it is the expression of very simple ideas in very complex language. I like to hope they can be brought together and I think Pirsig illustrates that they can. 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/
