Hi Mel
22 Jan. you wrote:
> Pardon me for jumping in. And excuse the length, but this is in response
> to your mind/body split. (It is also the very first first part of a
> very much longer piece in reaction to your "The SOL.") ---
Your opinion is always welcome Mel.
I had said (to Ham):
> > ................. And of those I find the mind/matter paradox most
> > paradoxical and I wonder if Essentialism offers some solution?
> > You know what the paradox is? Mind is mind how far one pursues it
> > and matter is matter, the twain never meet, yet matter (body) and
> > mind interacts constantly. For instance I think about moving a
> > finger and as long it's a thought nothing happens, but then I make
> > up my mind and the thought materializes in a finger movement. It
> > works the other way too, I take some chemical "stuff" (a drink) and
> > my mind alters.
Mel:
> The 'reality' of what one is conscious of is a pervasive illusion.
> It is tied to the conviction that oneself, separate, as-a-
> consciousness is 'real' and therefore what one is aware of is likewise
> real. -or- Socrates asks questions eliciting statements about the
> world 'we' share the perceiving of. Socrates is put to death. We
> continue to be conscious of the world after Socrates is gone.
I have read your piece - several times in fact - and I'm deeply
impressed by your knowledge and insights. I don't know your age
and don't get me wrong, but you remind me of the young Bo
roaming the libraries and contacting "wise men" to find a way out
of SOM's (or mind/matter's as I knew it as) "cul de sac": How
much we humans think, talk and write it's just "hot air" with no
significance for the real world "out there". And believe me I were
on to many of your ideas, although you are a notch more learned.
The strange thing is - as your piece shows - the moment one
starts to examine the S/O it dissolves into Zenoian paradoxes, yet
it does not make a dent in the SOM, it's like a loaded super-tanker.
The propeller has been in neutral since the empiricists and in "full
astern" since the turn of the (previous) century, but it has not
slowed much. The materialists are as sure as ever that the seat of
mind (consciousness) will be found as the idealists of it all being
mind and the "reconciliators" have worked out how mind and
matter really are one and the same. For example ....
When this discussion started a book "The Quantum Self" by
Danah Zohar was in fashion, she had found that consciousness
were located in the so-called "Einstein-Bose Condensate". (from
the flap)
"In this book I shall be considering very seriously the
possiility that consciousness, like matter, emerges from
the world of quantum events, that the two, though wholly
different from each other, have a common mother in
quantum reality".
and our - then - Quantum nerd Doug Renselle thought that the
MOQ was a Quantum off-shoot and constructed tables and
diagrams of sub-inorganic "levels" galore. And there are times
when Pirsig seems to have joined the Quantum bandwagon (when
he flogs SOM and calls it a "substance metaphysics, which it isn't.
its a mind/substance one). But all this is to no avail, the
mind/matter will not go away ..... not till the MOQ is understood,
but that seems just as remote.
> Subject/Object and Mind/Matter are formulations of language
> that, while less elegant than Zeno's statement, have proven
> themselves more enduring. They are no less creations of
> misstated language.
> SUBJECT/OBJECT
> There are no 'objects', there is no matter, in the sense that
> neither is 'fixed' and they therefore lose their claim of being
> an unchangeable state. In the unfolding history of physics
> in cosmology, there is a sense that behavior coalesces in
> provinces-of-particular-range.
No sarcasm, but you can go on about these - now Quantum-
focussed - sophisticated insights that SOM is illusory, just being
language ...etc., but it will not make the slightest dent in SOM and
this is so because SOM IS MOQ's 4th. static level and will not yield
FROM INSIDE ITSELF! It's as if the social level suddenly would
"realize" it's just a static level and drop its own values.
Mel, I appeal to you, if anyone is able to understand the MOQ - in
its SOL interpretation - it must be you. The S/O or mind/matter
distinction, is intellect's CREATION (value) there existed no such
distinction when the social level was "leading edge" like there
existed no societies when biology was, and no life at the inorganic
level. The various levels values/creations aren't illusory in the SOM
sense where there's either the objective or subjective (illusory)
alternatives, the inorganic patterns are real and so are life,
societies and the S/O distinction.
And yet. the MOQ high vantage point gives us a different view.
Reality's abso- abso- absolutely deepest context is the
DYNAMIC/STATIC split and this overrides everything, even its
own highest static level's SUBJECT/OBJECT one. This and only
this way intellect's paradoxes are dissolved, the same way that
Newton Physics dissolved the Greek Physics paradoxes, showing
that they emerged from false premises. I wish you would see this
grand picture and stop arguing against Intellect's S/O from
intellect's S/O premises, it looks impressive, but will not bring you
anywhere.
The trouble is that people expect some ultra-sophisticate
philosophical solution (look to Matt and DMB's exchanges) or
some ultra-scientific-sounding ditto. The REAL solution is too
simple for their liking and is ignored.
Sincerely
Bo
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