[Willblake2] I don't think I am asking for something to be handed down from on high because I still have not subscribed to the hierarchical notion that MoQ seems to profess. Once I learn more about how evolution ties in with this concept, in a meaningful way, I may believe.
[Krimel] I want to point out that hierarchical notions facilitate random access and recall. We are smarter, more intellectual, when we use them and we discard or alter them in proportion to the efficiencies that they produce. [Willblake2] Yes, possibly I am asking "what is". My question is what is "knowing", and does Quality help explain this. How do we know, and how do we know we know, comes later for me. If I were to take a scientific look at it (which is what I am most adept at), I would look in the brain (which I studied in graduate school, and published peer reviewed papers on). It appears that if it is neurological, my knowing is due to very subtle chemical fluctuations. Sodium and potassium travel across the cell membrane in distances that have to be measured at the angstrom level. Neurotransmitters are released and taken up in slightly larger spaces, but the chemical fluctuation is still very subtle. Is it this fluctuation that causes my knowing? If so, then it is no different from the earth "knowing" do to the fluctuation within this planet. Is the sodium ion a part of my knowing? It is certainly part of my brain. Or does this knowing start when there is a critical mass of neurons, tied up in a specific way, in my frontal cortex? If the frontal cortex is removed do we not know anymore? How much of the frontal cortex needs to be removed before we lose that knowing? Is it memory? If I wake up without remembering who I am, where I am, or where I've been, is this new knowing a different person, or is it still me? Do I start knowing from birth?, or in utero? Am I the same person day to day or reborn every minute as my body replaces chemicals in these nerve cells? I tend to believe there is some continuity to this knowing, but I cannot prove it without having an idea of what I'm proving. [Krimel] In my view the chief distinction between science and philosophy is that philosophy becomes science when techniques are developed to resolve a set of philosophical disputes. All sciences began as philosophy. What is left over as philosophy is that which can't be decided by other means. Psychology and the neurosciences are developing techniques for asking the questions of epistemology, how we know. This is a science that is only about 100 years old. Almost all of the contributions from neuroscience are less that 30 years old. What I have said repeatedly here is that without some understanding of what has been agreed upon about knowing and how we know, philosophy is just hot air. It is not as though my "knowing" can be reduced to organic chemistry. But without some appreciation of organic chemistry how can I claim to know anything about knowing? Organic chemistry is necessary for my knowing but not sufficient to explain it. That is what science seeks after: what is necessary. You and I are processes that seem to be continuous across time. We are processes that can reflect and recall experiences across time. The dynamic quality of this ongoing process of you and I depends on the static quality of the processes the give rise to us. Understanding those static process is critical to understanding the dynamic quality that emerges from them. [Willblake2] Experiences I have had led me to believe that my knowing is in that sodium atom, and in the nerve cell, and in the dynamic subtle flow of chemicals, and in my whole body and the way it interacts with the environment, and in the cloths I wear, and the food that I eat, and in the people I meet, and in the planet where I live, and... My knowing is all tied up in all of that completely, because I am all those things, I create all those things. I don't know how I do it, whether I control them, or am trying to learn how to. My knowing cannot be isolated to one single thing in this body, it is everything. I don't just think about Quality, I am Quality. [Krimel] Exactly, and our inability to specify exactly what that Quality is and what it will become is what makes it undefined. 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/
