valkyr said to Harding:
I prefer to think of all _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed
but not necessarily real or true.) ...'expanded rationality' occurs when an
individual transforms the natural tendency to reify self and world into the
natural tendency to hold all static patterns of value to be hypothetical
(supposed but not necessarily real or true.) ...It moves one away from thinking
of entities as existing inherently. So yes, I prefer to think of _static
patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed but not necessarily real or true.)
[and later added]
Value exists, and a conceptually constructed and projected static pattern of
value is thought and thought is imagination and not ultimate reality.
dmb says:
Thought is static value and not ultimate reality? Gee, where have I heard that
before? It almost sounds like Marsha is saying that there MUST be some
fundamental difference between static patterns and Quality itself, there must
be some basic discrepancy between concepts and reality.
"In his last unfinished work, Some Problems in Philosophy, James had condensed
this description to a single sentence: 'There must always be a discrepancy
between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous,
while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the
same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of
Quality."
With that discrepancy in mind, let us focus on that first paragraph. Let me
show you how Marsha goes wrong here. It's a fairly good example of a
fundamental mistake that she makes pretty much every time. As you can see,
she's trying to explain her "preference" for the term "hypothetical". The
paragraph is quite repetitive and wordy but it can be cleaned up quite a bit by
simply replacing " _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed but not
necessarily real or true)" with short, simple words like "concept" or "idea".
In that case, Marsha is saying she "prefers to think of all concepts as
hypothetical. ...'expanded rationality' occurs when an individual transforms
the natural tendency to reify self and world into the natural tendency to hold
all concepts to be hypothetical. ...It moves one away from thinking of entities
as existing inherently. So yes, I prefer to think of concepts as hypothetical."
Did you spot the crucial sentence, the one that tells you where Marsha has gone
wrong? She prefers to think of all _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical
BECAUSE, she says, "It moves one away from thinking of entities as existing
inherently". The problem, quite simply, is that the MOQ's static patterns are
not supposed to be conceived as inherently existing entities in the first
place. Static patterns are already de-reified in the MOQ. They are set up to
replace SOM's conception of inherently existing things. As is usually the case,
Marsha taking the MOQ's critique of SOM and then misapplying to the MOQ itself.
She is treating the cure as if it were the disease.
"Of course it's just an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the
dialecticians don't know that."
"...We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts,
language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these
analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name
of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not
accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that which causes us to
invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our
environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every
last bit of it."
To understand the world as an inherited pile of analogies is to understand that
we created this world, that we carved it out, that it is far more plastic and
malleable than the realists can imagine. When the oceans, earth, and sky are
understood as analogies, as concepts, then the world of understanding looses
its foundational status, its ontological primacy and is instead seen as an
elaborate set of human concepts.
"Of course it's an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians
don't know that."
Hypothetically yours,
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