Hello Marsha, Bo and Chris; I feel a little misunderstood. My own fault really; I wasn't clear.
Marsha you said: Would you like to state that words are not a mental phenomenon? Plato is not an authority for me, and I do not find his invention true to my experience. I have no perfect mental image of a bed, or a horse. And if I did, I do not know how that would translate to anything physical. Plato's argument doesn't work for me either; I certainly don't buy any part of his mental category. It may well be the source of the subject object division that plagues western thought. I do have universal concepts of bed's and horses and I think you do too. I mean in the sense that Aristotle and the Scholastics meant when they used the term. We all seem to have a common concept of women that isn't based on any particular Marsha, Jill, or Amy but is a simpler, perfect, universal symbol for all women. I said:>but if the mind is physical the bed and the horse have to be physical >too. You replied: How did you get to the mind is physical? How did I get to mind is physical? I couldn't see any other reasonable option. Mental and spiritual offer zero predictability... so unless you have a forth option? I said: If you can accept that the electrical energy measurable as it varies in >nerve cells and the mechanical energy measurable as it travels through >air or some other medium are physical, then the words that are the >effect of these energies on ear drums are as physical as rocks and >trees. You replied: I can and do accept this as a conventional truth. You can and do accept this (the scientific explanation) as a conventional truth. Well, without conventions we couldn't communicate at all and if you accept the conventional scientific explanation as a basis for communication, can you entertain the concept that words only exist in a living being, that you are creating words with meaning from these electronic images? You said: I do not accept, except when convenient, that mind, meaning and knowledge are physical things. "Quality is indivisible, indefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and a known." In general, I sense that we agree about many things but I cannot judge knowledge or truth by convenience and I cannot accept that anything is unknowable. It insults my concept of humanity. You flattered: Life is a dance. And I bet you are good at it. I enjoy verbal dancing better than fancy footwork. Thanks for this one. Bo, you said: >Kant did not exactly speak about Quality in the MOQ sense, but to >begin with a kind of the beginning. Western philosophy has >always had SOM as its premises, but then came the discovery of >the empiricists that all qualities, color, sound, taste, smell, touch >were produced by the senses - were subjective - Berkeley went as >far as to claim that there was nothing "out there". everything was >subjective. I'm a huge fan of Kant but he didn't get everything right either. I only wanted to observe that all of his categories are comparative, and the basis for each comparison is Quality. German idealism is as alien to MoQ as Plato's realism. I get that, but although I've been a huge fan of Pirsig's and have read ZMM at least forty times I haven't drank all the Kool Aid yet and won't until something convinces me that MoQ describes my reality. By the way, Bishop Berkeley was related to the Irish Swifts and probably one of my ancestors. His idealism was extreme; it's more likely that Kant was closer to the truth, the mind interprets "the thing itself". Then Kant who set out to save reason from this mad "pure reason" >and claimed there were something he called "forms of perception" >built into existence itself, not learned FROM experience rather >what experience was filtered through These were TIME, SPACE >and CAUSATION that made up OUR experience "das Ding f?r >Uns" (the world for us) But note that Kant did not shake the >foundations of SOM, the was still a world out there "das Ding an >Sich" (the world in itself). > >But the MOQ has taken leave of SOM , so I'm a bit surprised that >some of us keep speaking as if SOM's artificial problems has any >bearing inside the MOQ with statements like yours > > > ... "They continue with the realization that mind is not mental but > > rather physical, biological, entity and therefore, intentionality can > > be explained by the laws of physics". > >Yes, we know that the SOM struggles with such self-inflicted >problems stemming from its faulty premises that the S/O split >being existence's ground. The MOQ's premises however is the >DQ/SQ split and then the static levels, the said S/O split is >intellect's STATIC value. Kant's just cemented SOM, but has no >bearing on the MOQ. > Your comments are a puzzle to me. You've given me something to think about, let me reread Lila and get back to you in a few weeks. Chris, I wanted to say that anyone who claims that intentionality is a mental phenomenon is really saying that the actions cause by intentionality are really cause by magic. It's not much of an explanation. If, however, you assume that intentionality is a physical phenomenon, you can try for a more reasonable explanation than "magic". Science is not the final answer but it's better at explanations than fantasy. I apologize; I've only been following along for a week or so and don't know each of your positions. Let me fade back for awhile until I get a better feel for you guys. - thanks david swift 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/
