-----Original Message----- From: David M [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 2:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [MD] What is SOM?
> [Krimel] > I think this ability to see subjects and object (in a totally > nonmetaphysical sense) it one of the things that sets our species apart > from other primates. Arlo has brought this up several time in other > contexts. We can see ourselves as either subject or objects as static or > dynamic beings.We can see others as objects or identify with them as other > subjects. > But I do think that experience and the differentiation of subjects and > object from experience only makes sense in the context of someone making > the differentiation. Meaning and purpose and understanding do not reside > in the inorganic level. They arise from biological processes which do have > goals and purposes. > DM: Point being babies have to do some work to start to differentiate out their experience into self and not-self, and not-self things and not-self others. The whole metaphysical S-O split takes it further and MOQ suggests too far. [Krimel] I suspect few things in psychology have been studied cross-culturally as much as this. Infants in a variety of cultures go through this process and while cultures provide different contexts for the expression of these givens they are nevertheless expressed. Babies, we have learned come into the world possessing only what Jung might have called the collective unconscious. This is not some mystical other. It is the genetic code, that shapes our form and function based on the collected experience of all of our ancestors. Biology is the first great storehouse of memory. It is nature's record of the iterations and recursions of the past. That memory we are born with interacts with the memory of our people, or our culture as expressed by our parents, families and friends. Culture is formed by the same interactions of the static and dynamic as shape species. But rather that being preserved as genetic code it is preserved as patterns of interaction. The intellectual level is even more ethereal and less tangible in that it is patterns of individual thought encoded and preserved not static molecules or static interactions but on pieces of paper or bits of code. [DM] Now as for levels, sure the inorganic must have a lower form of experience than life, but how low, how far reduced. Sure lots but all the way down to unconscious law abiding mechanisms? Who knows? Perhaps a good clue is that when we learn habits they seem to occur less consciously. But this places things round the other way: perhaps electrons have to learn to love proton and only after years of repetitive relationship does this become an unconscious habit. But a reduced form of love of course, a love for vibrations we might imagine and even great big complex human beings love good vibrations too! Are electrical bonds a sort of endless little death orgasm? And what are a billion interacting particles experiencing? I imagine, and I am only looking for better metaphors and poetry than laws and mechanisms (I mean are reductionists bondage freaks? -confess!), that billions of interactions is a sort of pleasurable number crunching of lights and vibrations, and would that not offer you more motivation to build a cosmos than following the bloody laws of some boring creator-dictator? Or do you enjoy submission? See different concept-metaphors=different values and possibilities and sensibilities. It's all choice, its all built, Its all contingent, but you can only build on what's already been laid down and you can only built in your own little space-time segment. [Krimel] I think this kind of talk works well for explaining things to children or to older people who are a bit slow. Maimonides and Leo Strauss had this idea that the truth was just too much for the average Joe to swallow and so the very wise among us construct myths to help the simple folk get along in the world. The realist in me sees this as probably true but the Pollyanna idealist within says people really aren't that dumb and that things really aren't that complicated. My inner Pollyanna has suffered much abuse and yet the bitch refuses to be quiet... 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/
