> [Krimel] > What is the difference between potentiality and possibility > and how does potential become 'causal' and creative?
[Ham] I guess I assumed that potentiality was understood universally as "the power to be" or "the power to become actualized", whereas possibility applies to latent aspects of what already exists. But causality is an important issue for both epistemology and metaphysics, as Les Sleeth of physicsforums.com notes: [Krimel] It strikes me that what you are trying to do here is reify an abstraction. But it also seems circular as I see no difference between saying "the power to be" and saying "the potential to be" all the substitution does is create the illusion that this "power" is a force able effect change in the material world. I am tempted to just snip your quote from some guy on a physics forum but it does illustrate one of my problems with your thesis. You throw in quotes from just some guy's blog on the internet with the same authority you give to Einstein and Wheeler. I confess this is just a personal pet peeve but I find it at best annoying and at worst disingenuous. In this instance the quote suffers from the same flaw of taking the descriptive term 'potential' and giving it the power of causation. To say the before the big bang there was the potential for a big bang is nothing more than a truism. It totally misses the mark to same that potential caused the big bang. [Ham] In a section from my book, 'Actuality as Probability?' I wrote: "What has the potential to exist is not actualized by its own power, for prior to existence there is no 'itself', but rather by virtue of an other whose essence is the necessity to exist. Not only is it impossible for a man to bring himself into being, it is also just as impossible for him to sustain his existence. Whatever he does, he can only do on condition that he exist - feed himself, for example. We keep ourselves alive, but we do not preserve our existence. We need to be before we can keep ourselves alive. We bring the appearance of objects into subjective reality by framing them in nothingness, but we cannot bring them into being from nothing; we can only act according to the powers of our nature, within the limits of that nature." [Krimel] Here you once again speak of "an other whose essence is the necessity to exist." Nowhere in you thesis or in our various conversations have you shown either that such "an other" exists or has the necessity to exist. This is one of those issues that seem to drive you into silence. I wouldn't mind so much if you would stop using the concept. Fire does not bring itself into existence either nor does it sustain its own existence. We are just fire that can feed itself. What's the big deal? [Ham] Potentiality is the power to become, to actualize our reality, and it is primary to latent possibility -- "what happens" to that reality. [Krimel] Potentiality like possibility and probability are statements about what "might happen." They summarize all of the current actualities that might contribute to what happens next. You are confusing the description of the causes with cause itself. [Ham] Consider this statement from 'A New Theory of the Universe" by biotechnologist Robert Lanza: "When we consider the nerve impulses entering the brain, we realize that they are not woven together automatically, any more than the information is inside a computer. Our thoughts have an order, not of themselves, but because the mind generates the spatio-temporal relationships involved in every experience. We can never have any experience that does not conform to these relationships, for they are the modes of animal logic that mold sensations into objects. It would be erroneous, therefore, to conceive of the mind as existing in space and time before this process, as existing in the circuitry of the brain before the understanding posits in it a spatio-temporal order. The situation, as we have seen, is like playing a CD - the information leaps into three-dimensional sound, and in that way, and in that way only, does the music indeed exist." [Krimel] You use Lanza frequently which makes me deeply suspicious of him. From what I can tell others in his field and in the fields he criticizes have their own reasons to be suspicious of him as well. But what he says here seems to be that consciousness springs into existence from the activities of the brain. He seems to be taking Dennett's biological stance way too literally just as I would say you tend to take Dennett's intentional stance way too seriously. This amounts to confusing a heuristic with actuality. But I agree wholeheartedly when Lanza says above, "It would be erroneous, therefore, to conceive of the mind as existing in space and time before this process, as existing in the circuitry of the brain before the understanding posits in it a spatio-temporal order." I read this to mean the mind is what the brain does. [Krimel]: > Saying that we build an inner representation of our experience > is not the same as "constructing" something. Determining what > the order of physical reality is, is not that same as determining > 'that' it is. What you are talking about here may apply to > subjective understanding but has nothing whatever to do with > the physical world and the rules that apply to it. [Ham] I disagree, because subjective understanding is how we experience. And since the world we experience is the world we all recognize and define (by our intellectual precepts thereof), the "structure" of its components is consciously derived. As Lanza says, "...the mind generates the spatio-temporal relationships involved in every experience. We can never have any experience that does not conform to these relationships." [Krimel] We would all like to believe that the world we experience corresponds to the world that is. But this is not necessarily so. Statements about our perception of the world do not necessarily apply to the world as it is. Personally I think we do have experiences "of" the world but our experiences are not the world. Unless Lanza has more to say about this I don't think what you are quoting here contradicts this. Our minds reflect an external world. I think you are confusing the world with its reflection. > [Krimel] > In this universe Quality is manifest as pairs of opposites. > The primary pair is active and passive; static and dynamic. [Ham] Yes, that's what Cusanus calls "contrariety". But I thought that, according to the MoQ, everything in the universe is a static pattern. Are you saying that quality in the universe is both static and dynamic? [Krimel] You would have to provide a specific reference for me to evaluate what Cusanus says. But yes I am saying and have never deviated from saying that DQ and SQ are aspects of Quality. Many here would say the DQ and Quality are the same thing. I call this the "DQ heresy." Pirsig himself has lent some rather off handed support for this heresy. But I think it is an abomination. 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/
