Krimel said to dmb: All Pirsig has done is rename "causality". When he substitutes the word "preference" all he has done is swap the line of causality for a bell curve of preference. Adding waves to lines will turn a sock inside out. There is no topological shift here.
dmb says: Well, if you just call it "preference" but think of it in terms of causality then yea, only the names have changed. But obviously the point is to change the way we think about these relations. The traditional idea of physical laws is that they govern the actions from without. We can't actually locate these laws anywhere in physical reality, of course. So guys like Spinoza would say these laws are the mind of God. Einstein liked that idea quite a bit too. Or sometimes they say these laws just always existed, invisibly, eternally. The switch to preferences doesn't ask us to believe anything that fantastic. It says these same actions are "decided" from within rather than dictated from without. You might even say its a more democratic physics. Its volitional all the way down. Krimel said: I see causality in Jungian terms. Jung called it synchronicity or "meaningful coincidence." He did not associate synchronicity with causality. In fact I believe he thought of synchronicity as acausal. But I think "causality" is a special case of synchronicity where the probability of "coincidence" among events approaches 100%. The closer the relationship is to 100%, the more meaningful it becomes. Calling causality, "preference" allows us to speak about measures of central tendency, mean, medium, standard deviation but the implication of agency does not follow. dmb replies: Jung? Really? Okay, I'll give you points for trying to keep it interesting. But I also detect the distinct scent of bullshit here. Is "synchronicity" Jung's name for causality or did he think of it as acausal? Was it a kind of causality or did he not associate the two? You're saying quite a few contradictory things all at once. Its so awful bad that I can only conclude I'm being punked. Either that or you were drunk when you wrote it. But synchronicity is not a bad example, actually. As I understand it, Jung was talking about the phenomena of events being related in a non-causal way. That's what's spooky about any co-incidence, the way it defies the world as we normally understand it, which is in terms of causal relations. Synchronicities are that breed of co-incidence where this defiance is especially pronounced. He thought it was one of those things that offers a mighty clue, like a glitch in the Matrix that allows you to take a peek outside for just one brief moment. _________________________________________________________________ Make every e-mail and IM count. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ MakeCount 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/
