Hi Krim
Yes, where I question the use of the mechanical metaphor to understand
the behaviour of inorganic patterns and suggest you may just as well
use agency or experience (even if this behaviour can be very repetitive)
you seem to generally say 'chance' instead. That's not all bad, it's better
than mechanism and law as metaphors/analogies. But I'd press this
and say that all patterns have behaviour and who is to say what forms
of experience, or feeling as Whitehead says, is involved. Even machine
rebel and don't always obey the laws they are meant to follow.
And experiments are endlessly repeated to reach acceptable levels
of conformity. And even crystals seem to speed up how quickly they
form the more practise they have. There may be some cut off of
inner capacities somewhere between chance and the consciousness
of life, but where is it? I just suspect that a clear cutting line between
the organic and inorganic is perhaps more blurred than we assume.
Is there a proto-level of choice required in inorganic patterns. I wonder,
and Shimon Malin the physicist agrees, what kind of act is occurring when
wave functions collapse and a number of possibilities cease to interfere
with
each other and actualise as a single event? Process requires act/events.
I don't think these decision points only occur when someone observes
them, so is there something else that tips the process into realisation?
Is it something inner-active in the inorganic patterns that makes them
respond in one way rather than another. Something like being attracted
or repelled by certain vibrations? That's what I mean by inorganic
experience.
Here smoke this and you'll dig it man!
[David M]
I understand your concern with overly romantic attacks on science
and agree we should keep sight of sciences many benefits. But
there is a case against scientism and reductionism and essentialism
to be made against some approachs to science that I think inprove
our understanding of science. I also think there is a non supernatural
case against a type of naturalism, see this for explanation:
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_may2003.htm
[Krimel]
Your reading suggests while not always welcome are usually interesting and
eventually appreciated. But here the argument is not naturalism as opposed
to supernaturalism. I think Ham and dmb and Platt each in their own way
wants to embrace the supernatural while hiding in their respective
closets.
[David M]
I also agree that the aim of MOQ is to recontextualise the modern
world and offer a better context for understanding life, science and
society than SOM does. For me, we need to have an understanding of
how we base our knowledge on lived experience. Lived experience is
our context, this is a context of qualities, values, change, patterns, and
the potential for change and action. Given experience as it is and
understood (described) in terms like these we can go on to understand
how we can have scientific, personal, emotional, sexual, aesthetic,
social,
political, etc forms of knowledge. Experience is a larger category that
contains 'objects' of knowledge that exceed those that science wants to,
or
can, address.
[Krimel]
I have no problem with any of that with the possible exception of your
move
toward imbuing the inorganic with "experience." Even there I suspect the
disagreement is mainly semantic. I would add that all I think science does
is formalize the most natural process we have available to us for gaining
knowledge which is to check things out, mess with them and see what
happens.
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/
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/
