At 12:07 PM 1/28/2007, you wrote: >Hi Marsha > >See below. Hi David,
The contents of this post, pertaining to hot rocks, was not initiated by moi. m > > If I use tongs to take a rock out of a fire after being in the fire for > > hours, is the rock hot? > > No, the rock is a rock and does not have the ability to be hot, it can't > > understand hot - it is a rock. Hot is what we are when we touch the rock. > > It > > is a concept used to describe our perceived quality of the rock. The hot > > concept is in us, not the rock...the rock just is. The universe just is, > > it - like a rock doesn't hold concepts like design - that quality, like > > all > > humans concepts resides in us, not without us. > > Our senses provide data on reality which we order to form our perceptions > > and can lead to knowledge, and two or more humans will have shared > > objective > > reality. > > >DM: Sure being 'burnt' by a 'hot rock' is a word for what we experience >when we touch a rock with a high temperature (or chronologically the other >way round). But we can also talk >objectively of rocks with high temperatures that we have measured >the temperature of without touching. So the rock objectively has a >certain potential when hot that it does not have when cold. But what is >a rock? Again it is only the name for certain patterns that we may >experience. >Same for the universe. Now we happily move from our experiences of something >as hot to talk about something being hot as it has a certain potential that >can be >recognised less directly, e.g. measure with an instrument. Now if you want >to know if a rock experiences being hot or having purposes there is no way >to answer such a questions other than by analogy with our own experiences. >Sure we do not see rocks sweat, jump back, draw up plans, etc. But there >are other analogies you can make. You can try to break a rock and it will >resist you, its behaviour demonstrates some form of resistance. Now why is >this >and does the rock experience anything? In my experience being pulled apart >is a bad experience and I have a desire and intention to resist this. So it >may >well be the same for the rock within the confines of its extremely limited >ability to resist and respond to it environment (yet it does respond or >otherwise >it would have no properties at all). Sure its lack of analogy to us does >mean >it must be very different but how far this goes we cannot know. All being is >a form of behaviour, the belief that some of this is in some sense necessary >or mechanical and not agentive is not at all easy to demonstrate. Feel free >to >have a go. > >David M > > >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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
