[Matt] Okay, (1), that's not true about philosophy's 2500 year history (as you well know, given that Newton was a "natural philosopher"), but (2), I take your point, and
[Krimel] Not to belabor the point but the role of natural philosophers for the past 2500 has been to carve out philosophical questions and provide ways of answering them. As a result they are no longer considered philosophical questions anymore. Philosophical speculation about mathematics fell to the Greeks. Philosophical speculation about physics fell to the Italians and English. [Matt] (3) I _hope_ technology increases at a geometric rate because it's the only hope for humankind to feed the stupid numbers of them we've produced recently, and [Krimel] Tru dat. [Matt] (4) why on earth would anybody think that the Metaphysics of Quality should have something to say about cyborgs and holodecks? Isn't that like demanding that the literary critic have something relevant to say about gluons or carburetors? Even if philosophy is about including everything, once you reach the level of abstraction that it takes to do so, what kind of "relevance" are we exactly talking about here? [Krimel] If philosophy and especially metaphysics is about examining the assumptions that underlie one world view, then it seems to me at least that it _ought_ to have something to say. Pirsig's talk about cultural lensing for example. In fact I think that particular metaphor does not go far enough. If that was all there was to it I guess you would be quite right. But we aren't really restricted to single fixed focus lenses any more. We have lenses that go from wide angle to telephoto and focus automatically. As an off shoot of Taoism or sprouting out of the pre-Socratic conflict between a continuous versus discontinuous world I see no reason why it shouldn't have something of relevance to say. For example if one thinks about high levels of abstraction as something like your desktop icons. When you blow them up information is lost. Pixilation makes them rapidly become meaningless. But you can have icons that contain all of the information at whatever level you choose so that when you blow them up you reveal the additional detail. This of course means you still have lots of baggage to carry around. Or you can have something like a fractal icon where the level of abstraction one chooses is a conscious choice and infinite detail or lossless compression allows reconstruction at any level of detail. Got a baby crying gotta run. But something like that... 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/md/archives.html
