Hello everyone On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:41 PM, 118 <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dan, > > On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:16 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> Dan quoted SEP: >> "James made no concerted attempt to show or prove that the principle of >> pragmatism was correct. In his lectures, he put it into practice, solving >> problems about squirrels, telling us the meaning of truth, explaining how we >> can understand propositions about human freedom or about religious matters. >> But in the end, inspired by these applications, we are encouraged to adopt >> the maxim and see how well things work out when we do so." >> >> Dan commented on the quote: >> This is what I see you [Dave, but probably Matt, too] doing by sweeping away >> such questions as: is there a sound when a forest with no one around and >> does Don's dog dish exist when he walks out of the room. You're in effect >> telling us (like James) that high quality intellectual patterns work well in >> the real world so we should forget about questioning them. We should just >> take them for granted. I don't like that, though. That doesn't seem like >> philosophy to me... it seems more like giving in... ...I thought the quote >> might help shed light on my reasoning. > >>Mark: > Since I lost track of the dog dish conversation, I do not know if what > I present below is exactly relevant. But here I go. > > If a tree falls in the forest... is there a sound?
Dan: You'd be better served going back and reading the archived discussions but in a nutshell, it isn't about trees falling in forests with no one around. Rather, I was investigating the MOQ's defense against the critics of philosophic idealism (in response to one of Matt's queries), since that is a part of the MOQ. It goes something like this: Dave: I’m still hung up on the only (my emphasis) in this referenced quote: “But quantum theory has destroyed the idea that only properties located in external physical objects have reality.” (Robert M. Pirsig, page 14 in his paper Subjects, Objects, Data and Values, presented at the Einstein Meets Magrïtte conference, Fall 1995.) I infer from this that man’s reality always has a “subjective” component, which I believe is born out by the quantum theory, but not necessarily that there is no external “objective” component. And that while SOM maintains that we can isolate that “objective” component MOQ maintains we cannot. Under quantum mechanics if all men die then the does phenomena we observe and call “quanta” cease to be? Would the then remaining universe, other than man being gone, markedly change? Would the sun, earth, stars disappear or change in any way? Robert Pirsig: "This is the usual argument against the philosophic idealism that is part of the MOQ so it had better be answered here. It is similar to the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?” The historic answer of the idealists is, “What tree?” "In order to ask this question you have to presuppose the existence of the falling tree and then ask whether this presupposed tree would vanish if nobody were there. Of course, it wouldn’t vanish! It has already been presupposed. "This presupposition is a standard logical fallacy known as a hypothesis contrary to fact. It is the “hypothetical question” that is always thrown out of court as inadmissible." [LILA'S CHILD annotation 80] Dan comments: Matt introduced Don and his dog dish. Don is worried that when he leaves the room the dog dish will disappear and Fido will go hungry. I responded along the same lines as RMP by saying: what dog dish? What did Robert Pirsig mean by giving the answer "what trees" and how does it correspond to "what dog dish"? I wasn't trying to stop up the discussion by asking an unanswerable question... I was attempting to elucidate a correct MOQ answer to questions like these. Matt insists the dog dish is really there... that he has it on Don's authority. But in my opinion, that is beside the fact of what is under discussion. Even if Don's dog dish is taken as a real object, such objects don't exist independently of experience, at least not in the framework of the MOQ. And so there is no way for Don to verify if the dog dish exists or not if he walks out of the room. He assumes it exists by subscribing to the concept of object permanence. By bringing up the concept of object permanence, dmb seems to contend that the whole line of questioning is useless. He seems to be saying since the concept of object permanence is a high quality idea that we should just be happy with it and leave it at that. And I understand his reluctance. At the same time though, I'm not happy just leaving it like that. I think it is a worthwhile line of inquiry that may (or may not) lead to a better understanding of what the MOQ is on about. What throws me a bit is Matt's query concerning the difference between knowing New York City exists without experiencing it and knowing Don's dog dish exists without experiencing it. At first I took the existence of Don's dog dish as hearsay evidence and therefore not admissible in a court of law. But I'm not sure that's correct. Still, the overwhelming weight of evidence seems in favor of the existence of New York City as a higher quality idea than does the evidence for the existence of Don's dog dish... unless I am Don. Maybe it is a circular question that has no one answer but instead requires a multifaceted way of viewing reality that lies outside of the subject/object language that we're using here. Or maybe I should just take my own advice and shut the fuck up. Mark: > Sound is produced when a disturbance hits our eardrums and it is > converted to a firing of nerves within the brain so that we can make > sense of it. We do not hear sounds, we create sounds from that > interaction. A sound doesn't exist outside of what we create in our > heads. So to answer that question I would first ask: is there > anything around that will convert that air disturbance into sound? If > there is not, then it is impossible for there to be sound; sound > requires two components us and the disturbance. If one is missing > there is not sound. In the same way, we do not hear music. It is not > music until we decipher it. This is the act of creating. It is this > projection of our creations into the outside world that creates the > subject/object. While this is not a bad thing, it is way overdone. Dan: Imaginary trees probably make imaginary sounds... >Mark: > The dog dish... > Once again, we create the "dog dish" with the back of our brains, the > visual cortex (which actually exists in the dark). We do not "see" > dog dishes, we create dog dishes with our ability to form an image. A > "dog dish" does not exist as such without our ability to create an > impression of it. (If one is blind then other senses are used). The > reason we create it is to provide us with meaning. So, does a dog > dish exist when we leave the room? We can ask does a dog dish > persists in our memories, and we can say yes. But absent of memory, > the dog dish only exists when we are creating it from the light which > enters our eyes and is then transduced. Perhaps a better question > would be: what would our experience be like if we had no memory? Dan: I think we touched this with the mention of people that have OCD's and cannot remember if they turned off the tea kettle or not. >Mark: > If the object gains a life of its own, it becomes a truth and much > quality is lost. A dog dish (image) requires two components, the "dog > dish" and our ability to discern it. > > In terms of your quote, it is hard to imagine the context. However, > if what the author of the quote says is indeed an accepted notion of > James, I would say this: What could be more significant than to find > than if one adopts a maxim that it brings great meaning? The proof is > in the pudding, not in some written word. When one expresses Arete, > it is much more powerful than if one reads about it. All logic to the > contrary of a position is meaningless if one intuitively feels such > position. One can tell me how good grapefruit is until the cows come > home, but I still do not like grapefruit. However, it is important to > continually question, otherwise we become part of some "feel good" > cult. > > So, indeed, question things if they do not seem right, or if they go > against some inner perspective. Question them until you resolve the > issue so that it is meaningful for you. Certainly do not take someone > else's word for it. Does what James says resonate with you? If not, > then why not? If it seems wrong, then what makes it wrong? Dan: I'm not familiar enough with James to make a judgment one way or the other. What Robert Pirsig says seems right to me but maybe I am taking what he says the wrong way. A lot of his ideas seem to go against common sense in the way most people tend to view reality. In one way RMP's MOQ seems more in tune with quantum theory but the context is different: "I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV paper that the key to integrating the MOQ with science is through philosophic idealism, which says that objects grow out of ideas, not the other way around. Since at the most primary level the observed and the observer are both intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes of quantum theory have to be conflicts of intellectual assumption, not just conflicts of what is observed. Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed always involves an interaction with ideas that have been previously assumed. So the problem is not, “How can observed nature be so screwy?” but can also be, “What is wrong with our most primitive assumptions that our set of ideas called ‘nature’ are turning out to be this screwy?” Getting back to physics, this question becomes, “Why should we assume that the slit experiment should perform differently than it does?” I think that if researched it would be found that buried in the data of the slit experiment is an assumption that light exists and follows consistent laws independently of any human experience. If so, the MOQ would say that although in the past this seems to have been the highest quality assumption one can make about light, there may be a higher quality one that contradicts it. This is pretty much what the physicists are saying but the MOQ provides a sound metaphysical structure within which they can say it." [LILA'S CHILD annotation 102] Dan comments: Note the sentence: "Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed always involves an interaction with ideas that have been previously assumed." This is what I've been saying to Matt about Don's dog dish... that the dish is a presupposed idea of an object existing independently of any human experience. And I think that's what Robert Pirsig is saying about the tree that falls in the forest when no one is around. His "what tree?" is a way of calling attention to the presupposed reality that we call the world. If that is so, then the MOQ says while that is a high quality assumption that works well in the "real" world there may be a higher quality idea that contradicts it. Whether I am capable of expounding that idea is doubtful, but it seems better to keep one's options open and not reject out of hand that such an idea might one day appear. 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
