Hello everyone On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 10:27 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > "What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this > world is COMMON to us with other thinking beings. Through the COMMUNications > that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious > reasonings [the mythos]. ..And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of > our sensations [the primary empirical reality], we think we may infer that > these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we > know we haven't been dreaming. It is this HARMONY, this QUALITY if you will, > that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know." > > > > Dan: > Not sure where this quote is from but it smacks of objectivity. They are > saying because we as thinking beings agree on a commonality that it must be > real and true. This goes against the grain of the MOQ... it leaves out the > cultural lenses through which "thinking beings" view reality. ... > > dmb says: > > No, that quote is Pirsig and I think those ready-made harmonious reasonings > ARE the cultural glasses. And it's not just a matter of agreement with other > thinkers but also that they "appear to fit the world of our sensations". I > mean, we don't want to say the world begins and ends with the subjective > experience of each individual. That is pretty much the definition of > solipsism. This Pirsig quote, like the others, all emphasize the collective > nature of our mythos, our analogues, our ghosts, our cultural glasses etc.. > and they emphasize the idea that all those inventions were produced in > response to Quality, were guided on the track of the primary empirical > reality.
Dan: Ah... it's from the Poincaré section in ZMM... your capitalization and lack of citation threw me... "Poincaré made it clear that he was not speaking of romantic beauty, the beauty of appearances which strikes the senses. He meant classic beauty, which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp, which gives structure to romantic beauty and without which life would be only vague and fleeting, a dream from which one could not distinguish one’s dreams because there would be no basis for making the distinction. It is the quest of this special classic beauty, the sense of harmony of the cosmos, which makes us choose the facts most fitting to contribute to this harmony.It is not the facts but the relation of things that results in the universal harmony that is the sole objective reality. "What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we know we haven’t been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know. "Poincaré’s contemporaries refused to acknowledge that facts are preselected because they thought that to do so would destroy the validity of scientific method. They presumed that "preselected facts" meant that truth is "whatever you like" and called his ideas conventionalism. They vigorously ignored the truth that their own "principle of objectivity" is not itself an observable fact...and therefore by their own criteria should be put in a state of suspended animation. "They felt they had to do this because if they didn’t, the entire philosophic underpinning of science would collapse. Poincaré didn’t offer any resolutions of this quandary. He didn’t go far enough into the metaphysical implications of what he was saying to arrive at the solution. What he neglected to say was that the selection of facts before you "observe" them is "whatever you like" only in a dualistic, subject-object metaphysical system! When Quality enters the picture as a third metaphysical entity, the preselection of facts is no longer arbitrary. The preselection of facts is not based on subjective, capricious "whatever you like" but on Quality, which is reality itself. Thus the quandary vanishes." [ZMM] Dan comments: As a scientist Poincaré had to be objective... reading the last paragraph I see how RMP has yet to put this into the framework of the MOQ.. he is still working with a trinity. When the primacy of subject/object reality is replaced with Dynamic/static quality, then the quandary vanishes. But still, the one paragraph you offered seems to lends an ear to objectivity. >dmb: > I think Matt did a pretty good job of saying why even the MOQ has to explain > common sense reality. As I'd put it, we can't just go around thinking > everything we think and believe and care about is just an illusion. I think > it's better to think of those ready-made reasonings as those static latches > that are successful enough to have persisted into our time. And yea, "time" > is one of the patterns we've inherited. I mean it's one thing to say that > gravity is an invention but apples fell before Newton invented it and we > MOQers can fully accept Pirsig point and still prefer to jump out of a plane > with a parachute rather than without a parachute. You know? A rose by any > other name would still smell as sweet and gravity by any other name will > still crush your bones. Dan: That's the MOQ is all about... to explain reality in a better, more expansive fashion than thinking that we are a subject surrounded by eternal objects... I don't recall saying everything we think and believe and care about is an illusion. It is not a matter of either/or. It is a way of understanding the presuppositions that go into making up common sense reality. And maybe you're right... maybe it is safer not to probe too deeply. Thank you, Dan 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
