[DM] 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!
[Krimel] I would say that just about everything you say above is about preserving "the myth of control." If we aren't in control perhaps some agency is. If we aren't perhaps something else is. Something, a law, a principle or an entity must be. Even religions function to help us either preserve or deal with "the myth of control." Buddhist do this by asking us to stop desiring it. Christianity advises us to submit to a divine will that is indistinguishable from chance. The mystics urge us to achieve an emotional integration that feels like certainty. I am suggesting that the "myth of control," like my inner Pollyanna, probably can not be banished but we ought at least to see it for what it is. > [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/ 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/
