> Platt says: > > > I take it then that your answer to the question, "Did anything > > exist before human beings arrived on earth?" is "No." > > If that is indeed your answer, I suggest that may be why your > > Essence philosophy has been hard to swallow by participants > > on this site. That's certainly the case for me.
Agree. Well said. > Undoubtedly this "upside down" concept of reality defies common sense, and > I've avoided emphasizing it in my writing for that reason. I confess it was > hard for me to swallow, until I began to take Pirsig's statements seriously. > But there is nothing sacred or profound about common sense, and 2000 years > of it hasn't illuminated us as to how the universe came to be. > > Stanford physicist Andrei Linde, whom I quoted as saying "I cannot imagine a > consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. It's not enough > for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to > anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. In the absence of > observers, our universe is dead," has more to say on this subject, which > you can read at http://www.slate.com/id/2100715 . This is a conversational > little essay by Jim Holt, a friend of Linde who, while he exactly doesn't > reach my conclusion, at least opens the door to it. For example ... > > "Among the many curious implications of Linde's theory, one stands out for > our present purposes: It doesn't take all that much to create a universe. > Resources on a cosmic scale are not required. It might even be possible for > someone in a not terribly advanced civilization to cook up a new universe in > a laboratory. Which leads to an arresting thought: Could that be how our > universe came into being? > > "'When I invented chaotic inflation theory, I found that the only thing you > needed to get a universe like ours started is a hundred-thousandth of a gram > of matter,' Linde told me in his Russian-accented English when I reached him > by phone at Stanford. 'That's enough to create a small chunk of vacuum that > blows up into the billions and billions of galaxies we see around us. It > looks like cheating, but that's how the inflation theory works - all the > matter in the universe gets created from the negative energy of the > gravitational field. So, what's to stop us from creating a universe in a > lab? We would be like gods!'" > > But why a "laboratory"? In a comment on this essay, one of Holt's readers > says, "In our search for knowledge, we are so desperately driven by our need > to find meaning in our own existence and the universe that contains us that > we sometimes forget that knowledge is not only the means to an end but holds > value in its own right." Is it coincidental that he uses the phrase > "knowledge...holds value in its own right"? If Pirsig is right that Quality > (i.e., Value) is pre-intellectual, then all intellectual knowledge is > derived from it -- including our knowledge of an external universe. > > One more argument for my case: > Keith Ward, writing on "Scientific Understanding and the Point of the > Universe", says: "It presents a view of experienced reality as causally > dependent upon a realm of intellectual principles of supreme simplicity and > beauty, of utter generality and universal scope, wholly determining all > events in accordance with its own general laws." Note his inference that > intellectual principles are primary to physical reality. Intellect reflects > human rationality, of course, and the description "supreme beauty" is a > valuistic expression -- also a distinctly human realization. > > Has it occurred to you that maybe this convoluted ontology isn't as crazy as > it seems? Yes, indeed it has. To add to your citations above, the following from Ken Wilber: "All of these formidable insights culminated in an inescapable yet devastating conclusion, formulated as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, whose implications were (and still are) enormous. Recall that science has been proceeding on the dualism of subject vs. object, of observer vs. event, with Reality allegedly being that which would could be objectively measured and verified. This dualistic investigation extended into the world of sub-atomic physics, and scientists naturally wanted to pinpoint and measure the 'particles', such as electrons comprising the atom, for these were supposedly the reality of realities, the ultimate and irreducible things composing all of nature. Exactly here was the problem. To measure anything requires some sort of tool or instrument, yet the electron weights so little that any conceivable device, even one as 'light' as a photon, would cause the electron to change position in the very act of trying to measure it. This was not a technical problem but, so to speak, a problem sewn into the very fabric of the universe. These physicists had reached the annihilating edge, and the assumption that had brought them there, the assumption that the observer was separate from the event, the assumption that once could dualistically tinker with the universe without affecting it, was found untenable. In some mysterious fashion, the subject and the object were intimately united, and the myriad of theories that has assumed otherwise were now in shambles. . . . Declared Whitehead: 'The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation.'" Two comments. For me, quantum weirdness is all fine and dandy, but it is not the reality I know or deal with every day. Second, given that the scientific view of an S/O reality has run out of gas at the quantum level, a reinterpretation of reality is indeed needed at all levels as Whitehead said. This is why metaphysics -- whether yours, Pirsig's or anybody else with a broader view than science -- has such a pull on me. What I particularly like about the MOQ is that it takes into account the queerness of the quantum level while at the same time applying its explanatory power to everyday reality while avoiding the problem of "man produces the universe." Best regards, Platt 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/
