Dan said to Matt:
I would say in the common sense everyday world we all use the notion of object
permanence to great advantage... so much so that we tend to overlook it and
assume objects are real and independent of our experience. And that's fine when
it comes to common sense. But I also believe the MOQ (philosophy) states that
objects are not independent of experience and there is no way to verify if they
continue to exist or not when we are gone. ...and I have been questioning the
common sense notion that objects exist independent of experience. I've admitted
I'm not well-versed in philosophy but I assumed that's what we're up to with
this discussion.
dmb says:
Oh, I think I see the problem. It seems you're suffering from a misconception
of the claim that says "objects are not independent of experience." To put it
crudely, you think this means that objects only exists when we're looking right
at them or otherwise experiencing them. I'm fairly certain that this is a
misconception of the claim.
As we saw in Pirsig's description of the infant's development, objects are
derived from the force of DQ, from experience, from that complex bundle of
sensations, desires and other phenomenal realities. This reverses SOM's
conception of objects as pre-existing, independent realities which we may or
may not come to know. According to SOM, experience is caused by objects,
experience is the subject's encounter with these independent objects. According
to the MOQ, objects are the products of experience. The existence of objects is
DEPENDENT on experience. It is in that sense that "objects are NOT independent
of experience." Reality as we know it intellectually is entirely dependent on
experience all the way down. You know, the whole pile of analogies was invented
as a response to Quality, was derived from experience.
I'd also point out that the idea of "object permanence" includes the idea that
objects stay put even when we're not looking. In the MOQ we could say that this
feature of things is derived from the same complex bundle of sensations and
desires, is abstracted from the same experiences. The dog might get up and run
away but the dog's dish won't. I suspect that kind of distinction is about as
old as humanity itself just because it's important to know which things will
fight back when we try to eat them.
This is why I think common sense notions of objects will come first. They're
old and basic and practical. Maybe these practical ideas don't exactly count a
"foundation" for subject/object object metaphysics or scientific objectivity
but I think it would be safe to say that the latter evolved out of the former
in some sense. The fact that "object permanence" is learned so early in our
individual development suggests that this idea was invented early in our
collective evolutionary development. Like Matt says, I think the trick is to
explain these common sense ideas in terms of the MOQ - as opposed to the SOM
picture - but we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Dan said:
...I understand we all operate under the common sense notion of object
permanence. On the other hand, to assume because that notion works well in the
real world it represents a fundamental part of our reality seems at odds with
the MOQ.
dmb says:
But the "object permanence" lesson comes from Lila and I've been explaining
that objects are secondary products of experience, not fundamental parts of
reality. We are talking about static patterns of quality that are derived from
Dynamic Quality. We're talking about static patterns of quality that have
worked unproblematically for countless generations, worked well enough to
persist into our own time. I've been trying to explain objects in terms of the
MOQ rather than in terms of the metaphysics of substance. According to the MOQ,
the common sense notion works well because it agrees with experience, because
it fits with the world of our sensations and because it makes sense in relation
to or harmonizes with the rest of the mythos. That is all that pragmatic truth
can mean. That's what it means for an idea to work, to be true. It doesn't
require any kind of metaphysics to believe the arrow head still exists even
after it has buried itself in your chest. "Hard" and "sharp" and
"heavy" are not philosophical ideas, you know? They're practical ideas about
concrete and particular experiences. These qualities are not simply what
objects are like in and of themselves - but rather that's what things are in
relation to us. A rotting corpse is disgusting to us but the vultures love it.
To say that objects are independent of us is a metaphysical claim, a claim
involving two distinct ontological categories, us and the independent,
objective reality that we hope to gain knowledge of.
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
