----- Original Message -----
From: "Ham Priday" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] moq thought experiement 1.
[Krimel]
Thoughts on TE1:
This thread was often hard to read because I had so many
reservations about the experiment. It started out as sci-fi but
gravitated toward an ill conceived understanding of the
brain-in-a-vat scenario. Brain-in-a-vat is a modern variant on
Descartes' clever demons argument. It is the idea that our
experience is being manipulated by some external agency for
purposes of its own which may or not be in harmony with our own.
[Craig]:
An ill conceived understanding of the brain-in-a-vat scenario, indeed.
Neither the Brain-in-a-vat nor Descartes's clever demons argument
is a morality tale. Their point is epistemological. In each case it is
an attempt to drive a wedge between our experience & reality.
Craig is correct. (How did we ever manage to turn epistemology into
daemonology?) In fact Descartes never "argued for" demons, nor did he
originate the 'Brain-in-a-vat' analogy. This argument is a contemporary
take on the Meditations, by Hilary Putnam and others, specifically where
Descartes concedes that his perceptions cannot be trusted, speculating
that an evil demon might be controlling his experience, or that he might
only be dreaming.
But since Krimel has raised the analogy of an "external agency"
manipulating our experience "for its own purposes", how is this different
from Pirsig's theory of a moral universe that "moves all things to
betterness"? Whether daemonic or not, if man is programmed by an external
agency, he is clearly not a free agent, thus ruling out the possibility
that the cognitive subject can choose his own values and direct his own
actions in the world.
I submit that it is Pirsig, not Descartes, who has put man in a cosmic
"vat" by denying him the autonomy of free choice and self-determination.
At least Descartes acknowledged that he was a unique entity whose
experience was proprietary and non-transferable.
What are your thoughts on this aspect of "agency"?
--Ham
Greetings Ham,
Sentient beings are not things, not selves even, but clusters of
interrelated, ever-changing, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual
static patterns of value interacting within a field of Dynamic Quality.
Marsha
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