IN REPLY [Tim] I understand your point about "correctness" only having meaning within a concept of interpretation. But, regarding the MoQ it seems that Phaedrus was suggesting that the pattern in the structure to be left invariant is the real you. It seems taht you, the systematic correspondence function, and correctness of the map are all ultimately unknown, and that it is ours to have faith, dynamically, that they do cohere.
**Alexander** But what, then, is the interpreter? I wrote in an offshoot from this discussion about the difference between consciousness and conscious experience. "Cogito ergo sum" is invalid, because consciousness isn't what thinks, but what listens to the thought. So this thought which says "I think, thus I am" is an intellectual pattern of experience - quality if you like. But you can't really say what this consciousness is, because it seem somehow to be generated by the central nervous system. But this invariant "self" is really a not-I, when it isn't filled up with experience. In an empty state it seizes somehow to be, and you become unconscious. So this "self" corresponds to any-thing which it perceives or to no-thing at all. > [Tim] I have been thinking about going back and looking at your use of mind/matter. Maybe this would be a good place to bring it back in. When I look at your above I see two simultaneous patterns, one in the material, and one in my mind. THese seem intertwined in such a way that neither of them is me, but the process of intertwining them seems fair to me - where I take my own existence as a leap of faith. **Alexander** In the "all-matter" approach, everything is mind which is perceived by the nervous system - the mind is the abstract system of the nervous system, just like the relation between hardware (the brain) and program (the mind), mentioned in Lila. This is the approach. Of course, we are mind, but we try to find out how the world of the perceptions work, and how to manipulate it in a rational way - and then we decide to also describe what mind is, and what it does in this word. In the MoQ approach, we never leave try to leave the mind and perceive the mind from the outside - but we stay within it and so everything becomes part of the same: quality. [Tim] yes. I think. But then what is the value of developing a metaphysics? **Alexander** A metaphysics could be useful in the search for new perspectives - that's at least what I think - and it has both social and intellectual applications. [Tim] There was a time when I was supposed to have known something about entropy. I probably shouldn't pretend to that now! Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I'll try to go through it to refresh myself. Also, since you like words, it may interest you to know, if you don't already, that "thermodynamics" is a misnomer, and that it would be better called 'thermostatics' - it doesn't deal with dynamic, but only equilibrium systems). Entropy (neg-entropy) is a hard concept. It doesn't depend on any context. When the concept of entropy was first developed it was in conjunction with extracting work. That was before the development of statistical mechanics, and so entropy was described from its context in experience, regarding the ability to do work. When stat mech was developed, entropy was derived from fundamental considerations. So, you mentioned a room of air. If the room of air is our system then it is improper to talk of a configuration thereof as a state. The way to say it is taht the configuration in which all the molecules are found in only one half of the room contributes very little to teh overall entropy of teh system. As a simplified approximation, we can look at the flipping of a coin, heads being one half of the room, tails the other (the coin ignores interaction between flips). In this case the system (the room of air) would be the number of flips. The partition function would be the number of ways these flips could go. All heads is one of an increasing shitload of possibilities. If the number of coin flips approaches avagadro's number, you can say that that option contributes essentially zero to the possible outcomes, and therefore, has nearly a zero probability of occurrence. Of course with air rather than coins these options have to be weighted due to the fact taht air interacts and causes an energy bias on the configurations; this only lessens the contribution to the entropy of the system from teh configuration we are talking about. **Alexander** Heat engines, yes. But the concept of statistical mechanics was developed quite soon afterwards. It's called dynamics because it concerns functions of time. interesting, I was thinking of "confine" and "inform" as to their functions, from a process perspective. I still think that you have interchanged "inform" and "confine" here. But I think I have found my error. I don't think that I have given proper deference to teh social confinement. (There is an interesting discontinuity at this level that I didn't really notice until now.) What makes a society? How does one confine ones intelligence to the social? I might answer that intelligence suggest a 'fair' treatment of all I. Hitler might argue that jews should be exterminated. How do we get out of this?! **Alexander** A society is a social system with a certain kind of concrete organization, or social institutions if you like. You almost never find a society without a centralized control function (such as a state and its capital). Any time when some set of people interact more with each other, than with people in some other set, or just the complement of the set, then it's possible to talk about some kind of social system. So if people in the US interact more with each other, than with the rest of the world, then the US is a social system. Smaller social system, which are governed by a centralized control function, I call "communes". Larger ones, governed by states, I call societies. Then, in the USA, you can talk about the greater society of the whole country, or about sub-societies of the states (here is also an ambiguity of words: in some languages, the word "state" refers to the roman concept of a centralized government, but in the US, I think it instead refers to the sub-societies called "states" within USA). But still, if intellectual patterns of value destroys society, this intellectual patterns of value will destroy themselves in most cases. In that respect society confines intellectual patterns of value. What I think we must add is this: that there are "static intellectual patterns of value" in the individual - but also in the social system. Here is a differenes. Society doesn't really confines the intellectual patterns in the individual, but only those of the "collective". [Tim] First, since I am addressing mind/matter, isn't any given biological pattern, a material pattern as well as a, hopefully congruent pattern in my mind? Second, society might work towards its destruction - even naively. Third, what is 'society'? What does the MoQ say of this? **Alexander*** 1. A biological pattern defers from other physical patterns in that it is a collection of physical patterns which otherwise seldom are found together. Now Pirsig calls it "organic" which is the same as "carbon´-based". But I guess you could use "genome" as well. A chemical patterns governed by a genome and systems based on such patterns are a biological patterns. 2. Society might, yes. And as soon as it seizes to work as a whole it exists no more. A body can also destroy itself, but as long as it works, it goes on, but when it seizes to, you call it "dead" - and when it is dead, it gets decomposed and is soon no longer distinguishable from its surroundings. 3. See above. 4. I guess, in MoQ a society might be a certain kind of set of social patterns. > I guess I will just mention the example from Lila, about the brujo. One of the suggestions is that the best solution was way out of the realm of the local solutions. One solution to the problem of the brujo was to send him to another tribe where he naturally fit in. If a contemporary brujo were to think of society without confining himself to local, provincial, short-sighted definitions, he might not worry about the horror you mentioned above. It seems that within the MoQ, there is nothing to say to him. If the picture of society to which he confines himself intellectually is one that will inhabit teh Earth 100,000 years hence, what can the MoQ say? **Alexander** This was a harder one. If he was before his time, but would be right with time, I guess his best function would have been to become a prophet of some kind. I guess this questioned could be a whole new discussion. /A 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
