Hi MOQers
Does SQ and DQ act to give us evolution and create professors
long before anyone ever gets around to coceptualising these
qualities in human experience? The guy who wrote Lila
seems to think this:
"The law of gravity, for example, is perhaps the most ruthlessly static
pattern of order in the universe. So, correspondingly, there is no single
living thing that does not thumb its nose at that law day in and day out.
One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of
gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this
law is a measure of its degree of evolution. Thus, while the simple protozoa
just barely get around on their cilia, earthworms manage to control their
distance and direction, birds fly into the sky, and man goes all the way to
the moon.
A similar analysis could be made with other physical laws such as the Second
Law of Thermodynamics, and it seemed to Phaedrus that if one gathered
together enough of these deliberate violations of the laws of the universe
and formed a generalization from them, a quite different theory of evolution
could be inferred. If life is to be explained on the basis of physical laws,
then the overwhelming evidence that life deliberately works around these
laws cannot be ignored. The reason atoms become chemistry professors has got
to be that something in nature does not like laws of chemical equilibrium or
the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics or any other law that
restricts the molecules' freedom. They only go along with laws of any kind
because they have to, preferring an existence that does not follow any laws
whatsoever."
Clearly DQ and SQ can be used to tell a cosmic story that is pre-human
experience and is not in an anthropocentric prison.
I suppose the usual suspects will claim they were never making
anthropocentric restrictions about such reasonable knowledge.
If only they were not so confused in the first place. Funny how post
modernists like Matt used to get blown off, now that the
MOQ seems to have turned into a form of anti-realist post modern
philosophising round here. What a shame, can anyone
help to save the MOQ from this terrible fate? Is quality not real? If only
DQ is real and DQ cannot be defined how can there
be truth, SQ can be judged but apparently it is not real as it is not
experienced. Yet Pirsig embraces truth. What has gone wrong
since I was last here?
DM
-----Original Message-----
From: David Morey
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 11:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MD] Independent reality?
Hi MOQers
Does SQ exist prior to its appearance in the individual known as Lila?
Prisig seems to think so:
"It isn't Lila that has quality; it's Quality that has Lila. Nothing can
have Quality. To have something is to possess it, and to possess something
is to dominate it. Nothing dominates Quality. If there's domination and
possession involved, it's Quality that dominates and possesses Lila. She's
created by it. She's a cohesion of changing static patterns of this Quality.
There isn't any more to her than that. The words Lila uses, the thoughts she
thinks, the values she holds, are the end product of three and a half
billion years of the history of the entire world. She's a kind of jungle of
evolutionary patterns of value. She doesn't know how they all got there any
more than any jungle knows how it came to be.
And yet there in the middle of this "Lila Jungle" are ancient prehistoric
ruins of past civilizations. You could dig into those ruins like an
archaeologist layer by layer, through regressive centuries of civilization,
measuring by the distance down in the soil, the distance back in time."
How we 'came to be' in history, prior to our experience, if it talks like a
realist and walks like a realist....
DM
-----Original Message-----
From: David Morey
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 6:03 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MD] Independent reality?
Hi Dan
Please see comments below:
All the best
David M
Hi Dan
Dan:
That's my thinking as well. We create reality, not the other way around.
And those who fight against this notion are so convinced they are
independent observers of a separate reality it is impossible to reason
with
them. They throw up a whole host of reasons why this cannot possibly be
so.
DM:
Personally I would avoid saying we create reality, rather I'd say that the
only reality we directly know is experienced reality.
Dan:
Yes, I know you would avoid saying that. I disagree. The way you put
it--experienced reality--we experience a separate reality. Not in the MOQ:
instead, experience is primary. Concepts of reality arise from experience
but these concepts are not experience. We create our reality; reality does
not create us.
DM: Once again you keep projecting on to me things I don't say or think.
Yes experienced-reality as I call it is the primary reality, it is
experience,
it is reality, it is not a representation of some other reality,
it is primary, we do not experience objects that are somehow separate
from us, everything we experience makes up what we are, what we
experience, it encompasses everything we can talk about, etc. My point
is that it is odd to say that this is all there is to reality, that reality
does
not and cannot exist beyond the realm of human experience. If you say this,
and DMB seems to be saying this too, you are creating an existential
prison, because using the power of thought and I take science as the
exemplar of thinking outside of and beyond our primary experience (as
brilliantly described and conceptualised by the MOQ I would say), we
can discuss and speculate on processes, experiences, histories, events,
etc they go beyond direct human experience. These exist in previous
ages of history or in different parts of the cosmos without being
created (as you put it) by being situated within human experience.
This is not to put these events and processes and histories in terms
of SOM but to see that there are many other unfolding of SQ and
DQ in the cosmos that go beyond human experience and human
experience of SQ and DQ. Sure we only know of these other forms of
SQ and unfolding DQ via our human experience but they clearly go
beyond this, we speculate and can test via empiricism that our toys
go on existing even when we hide them in the cupboard, and we can
accept the evidence we have for our parents having lives before we
were born, and for the existence of a period of time before there
were any human beings. This is not to introduce SOM back into MOQ,
as I do not suggest we are here adding any separate objects into
our experience, rather by reason we must deal in the MOQ with
processes/unfolding of SQ and DQ that go beyond either our individual
or species based experience. Yes I reject that there are any experienced
primary qualities that SOM is based on, we have only SQ and DQ
qualities that SOM calls secondary qualities, but for me MOQ does not have
to be an anthropocentric philosophy, because it can accept that there is
a reality of SQ and DQ that goes beyond the human, this is what MOQ
can reason on the basis of its conceptualisation of primary experience.
Otherwise MOQ becomes Kantianism without SOM language, MOQ then simply
gives us Kantianism without subject and objects by seeing
things-in-themselves
as non-existent, so that all reality is human reality, unable to exist
without
human co-relationism. Heidegger probably makes the same mistake, as
he also replaces Kant's SOM approach with a Dasein formulated understanding
of experience, but equally he is unable to offer a way to make sense of
time before human conscious experience. You are so barking up the wrong tree
when you think my challenge is bring back SOM into the MOQ, continental
philosophy rejected SOM years ago, very old hat stuff now, but the problem
with continental philosophy is its disconnect from science, and MOQ is
falling into the same trap I believe given this anthropocentrism you and
DMB seem to be advocating. Science has its own dualist, materialist,
SOM problems, and MOQ and its good approach to SQ and DQ could
be good conceptual tools for addressing these problems in science,
but the isolation in human experience as if there are no other unfoldings
of SQ and DQ beyond what humans are experiencing prevents any
hope of engagement between the MOQ and science it seems to me.
I am not saying this position that you are taking is worthless, it is an
improvement on SOM, but it isolates MOQ from science in exactly the
same way as continental philosophy is isolated. The Speculative Realist
school of thought is very new and very active and is precisely opening
up this problem and addressing this issue by putting realism back into
philosophy and conceptual thought. Where MOQ says DQ, SR is talking
about openness and contingency as disallowing determinism and
the illusion that the world and experience can be understood in terms
of just laws or justv objects or even just SQ I might add.
My challenge is that an anthropocentric MOQ is an improvement on
SOM but it is a dead end, it is backward looking, and it will
condemn the MOQ to history as speculative thought is now
pressing on beyond the hermeneutic prison introduced by Kant,
and into which the MOQ falls as into a disaster. But it could
be avoided if only you and other on this list could see that
there is a more radical alternative for the MOQ, and stop
mistaking this true radical alternative for a return for SOM.
That's my real position rather than the one you keep projecting
on me. I respect the idea that the MOQ needs protecting
from a return of SOM, but that is not what I am proposing
and you are barking at windmills as far as I am concerned.
But where does this leave the idea of what reality might transcend our
individual
experience, or general human experience, or the reality that we assume
existed prior to human beings
or life on Earth.
DM: Yes MOQers, come on, how does the MOQ tell the story of the
cosmos prior to and up to the dawning of human conscious
experience? Easy I say, SQ and DQ exist for all processes
not just human ones, but the anthropocentric interpretation of MOQ
can't say this.
Dan:
How can anyone know that one way or the other?
DM: So you don't believe in dinosaurs, are you happy
to be in the same bed as the creationists? -see further
comments below.
Hello everyone
Hi Dan
Sorry bit continental, I will add my thoughts tomorrow but this may be a
better pointer to what I am trying to get at...
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/you-cant-handle-the-truth
All the best
Hi David
Thank you for the link. It is a bit more decipherable. And I can see what
you're on about but that does not alter my view. I lift this quote as an
example:
"The principle of unreason means, as the subtitle of Meillassoux’s book
announces, the “necessity of contingency”: the absolute truth that nothing
is eternal, that everything can transform or perish, even the human
perspective. But in order for the principle of unreason to be true,
Meillassoux continues, there must always be *something *beyond the “for us”
perspective. In order to remain persistently agnostic about what lies
beyond his consciousness, the rational “for us” thinker must commit to an
absolute truth: that there is a world beyond his merely contingent thought.
Starting from the premise of the “for us” thinker, Meillassoux thus
gradually begins to work his way back toward the absolute — what he calls
“the great outdoors,” the world beyond human perspective.
DM: -yes there is DQ and SQ beyond, before and prior to human beings
I would suggest.
Dan comments:
If there is a world beyond human perspective, how can we know of it?
DM: Yes a world, that exists whether we are experiencing it or not,
do you not recognise that there was a world prior to human evolution?
Do you not accept that science has evidence of the existence of pre-
human time? Yes, what we know comes via experience, but our
understanding of this experience enables us to know what lies
beyond, before and potentially after the limits of human experience,
this is what science assumes and investigates, to say otherwise is
a trap. Meillassoux argues the pros and cons of this issue much better
in his book than I can, well worth a read for its relevance to MOQ.
Dan: We
cannot say if there is or there isn't... we can say nothing at all about
'it.' Anything said is merely unverifiable conjecture.
DM: I assume my toys still exist when they are in the cupboard,
my evidence is putting them into the cupboard and taking them
out again later, now let's not start throwing them about (joke).
DM: Like the tao I think DQ should be seen as an ontoligical
category going beyong human experience to all processes,
events, unfoldings. Sure there is a leap here from human
experience to the non human workings of the cosmos but
seems to me we are all too aware that humans are only a
part not the whole of reality (you seem to be denying this with
your stance), but there seems no good reason why we cannot
move on from our understanding of the microcosm of human
experience to see what sense we can make of the macrocosm,
you seem to want to just say nothing and see yourself as
cut off and trapped in the microcosm. I see them as related
and can use the one to make sense of the other as much as is
possible, you are imposing limits on the MOQ (stuck in the
cave as I said to DMB) that are not necessary, not once we
have acknowledged the primacy of human experience/microcosm
and moved on to engage with the fullness of the context of a
larger unfolding.
Dan: Now, it may be
tempting to link this 'absolute' to Dynamic Quality but that is incorrect.
In the MOQ, Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous. Dynamic
Quality is not beyond human perspective.
DM: This is the big error I think, if Pirsig thinks this then the MOQ
and me will have to part company. I can't see that Pirsig makes
this mistake, but he may be neutral, at times he seems to be,
maybe some evidence he disagrees with me but not conclusive. The question
is: is Pirsig a realist? I think Pirsig's approach to SQ and truth may
well suggest he is.
Dan: The MOQ states that there is no 'ultimate' reality, no absolute.
DM: You sure: Lila: "But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate
reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. "
Other than this he does not comment on the status of quality as to whether
it is ultimate or absolute, but he does attack other ideas
about the absolute or ultimate as errors, but this excludes the status of
quality and leaves this question open on the status of quality.
I am not keen on these terms but the point is about the independent status
of the cosmos that carries on with or
without human beings experiencing it I think we can suggest, if not we are
in a fruitless trap.
I haven't
read the book but from this essay it appears Meillassoux is looking for
some kind of absolute truth to hold onto.
DM: I really think you should, how about testing your views and ideas for a
change instead
of questioning mine, it will do you good, a good work out, a bit of rigour
and fresh thinking,
This type of inquiry has been
going on for thousands of years. It is nothing new. On the other hand, the
MOQ sees truth as high quality intellectual patterns which may change when
new and better patterns emerge.
I suggest rather than holding onto all that old tea in your cup to dump it
out so as it can be refilled with something new and original. Look at the
MOQ with a fresh set of eyes instead of comparing it to every old notion
that comes along. I mean, if you really want to form an understanding with
it. If not, fine. Keep on doing what you're doing. You can of course take
comfort in the fact that you have plenty of company.
DM: Thanks for your kind concerns, I am very happy that I am not suffering
from MOQ stale mate, my concern is that an anthropocentric MOQ is
going to turn sour and is likely to be put down the sink, I think it
deserves better and has better possibilities and opportunities but a
few people here are sadly ignoring these and are fighting imaginary
SOM attacks on the MOQ instead of seeing the problems they are
getting the MOQ into. Better than SOM yes, but not good enough,
and unlikely to survive out in the big wide world I fear.
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
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
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
