To: Platt and Matt and Peter and gang
From: Roger
Re; Independent Reality
PLATT:
Most seem to agree with Justin who wrote
that there is “… a distinction between Reality and the mind’s perception of
reality.” As to the question of whether patterns also exist “out there,”
there’s some
disagreement.
Matt Ketchum says, “We experience patterns of value then construct more
patterns of value to explain them.”
Peter Lennox says, “… the patterns we perceive are subjective impressions
of some other, objective reality.”
ROGER:
To Matt, I would remind you of Pirsig's warning:
"the patterns are not the reality they describe"
To Peter, I find lots of value in your thoughts on the issue, but I suggest
avoiding the limiting terms subjective and objective when referencing
reality. They are bound to introduce problems and unintended baggage.
To quote Pirsig:
"There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. [that the
universe is composed of only subjects and objects] It is just an assumption"
BTW I made the same mistake of trying to resurrect the 'O' word last week.
PETER:
Likewise the notion of random patterns; I confess I'm a little foggy on
this - isn't the notion of random-ness a product of the 'scale' of
conceptualising?
I said in an earlier post that 'what is texture to us is terrain to an
ant' - now pull back further. Texture becomes something else, something
homogenous - isn't that what we mean by random, that homogeneity
(:apparently stochastic layout) - the absence of pattern. And isn't that the
product ENTIRELY of the subjective viewing scale?
In fact, this absence of information (as someone has just touched on) is not
'no information at all' -it's another class of information, and valuable as
such.
So, is there actually any such thing in the universe as an area or period of
truly random layout, at every possible viewing scale that we could conceive?
or have i missed something?
ROGER:
To answer your ending question, no. Patterns are not the reality they
describe. They are metaphors for reality. There is an infinity of possible
metaphors. The arbiter of quality of any given metaphor is its consistency
with experience and other metaphors, its simplicity, its clarity, and its
conclusiveness. Inconsistent metaphors are commonly called lies or errors.
Overly complex metaphors are unwieldy and impractical. Metaphors of
randomness offer very little information. Etc......
Your view on 'scale of conceptualizing' captures this same basic view. (I
would again stay away from subjective or objective though!)
PLATT:
But at least three of us believe there is no reality (or patterns) “out
there”
independent of us. As yet we haven’t heard definitively from Pirsig on the
subject – or so it
would seem.
ROGER:
I think it is all spelled out in Lila. The problem is that the answer or
pattern each of us derives from the reading is similarly not some objective
truth, but again is a metaphor to be judged by the aforementioned qualities
of intellectual patterns.
Rog
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
