Hi DMB See comments below:
> dmb says: > First of all, you have been using the words "transcended" and > "transcendent" > in a very confusing way. DM: Yeah, it's called playing with meanings, possibly changing them get used to it. DMB: So then you're only saying the future goes beyond > the past. Expectations are surpassed by surprize. These sorts of > statements > are true, but they're also extremely trivial. DM: Thanks, backtrack Buchanan, when in a corner it is sensible to change direction, but I love the way you always claim you were never in the corner you were trying to defend. Of course, whatever we say about experience can be called trivial, it's just ordinary experience. But the status of the possible as present to us, giving us a future, seems pretty important to me. I mean without the future where is there for us to go. Heidegger's Being and Time covers this rather well, the most important philosophy book of the 20th century for many philosophers. > > 1. beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human > experience: DM: Please note merely physical, i.e. a SOM view of this word. > 2. surpssing the ordinary; exceptional: > 3. (of God) existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the > material universe. DM: Material universe, SOM again. > 4. (in scholastic philosophy) higher than or not included in any of > Aristotle's ten categories. > 5. (in Kantian philosophy) not realizable in experience. DM: A dualist. > > I suppose number 2 would be the closest to your use but I'd argue that the > future per se is pretty darn ordinary and one can only hope that it'll be > surprizing or exceptional. The notion of transcendence as openness is odd DM: You mean great, I mean if something is open it must open onto something, or at least let something in? > Transcendent can be opposed to immanent and opposed to the ordinary but > since when is it opposed to "closedness"? DM: Isn't innovation great? And its odd because the MOQ's > first division is between static and dynamic and this language is so much > clearer and well known to everyone here. If that's what you're getting at, > why not say so? I mean, nobody here is making a case for a closed or > static > system and I don't know of any thinkers who do. DM: Fair point, I want to expand/explore,as far as we can, what we mean by DQ. I think the infinite possible is what DQ gives us. I think the use of the term transcendent is a word that points at this reality, so does DQ, do does imagination & creativity. > > And all of that is simply an attempt to show some of the reasons why a > person might be confused by your comments. I'd also complain about the > notion that its useful to talk about the potentials and possibilities of > everything. How can we even begin to know that? Aren't the possibilites > really defined by one's range of vision? Doesn't it make more sense to > think > of options and choices on a more human level than to think of possibilites > as some kind of embryonic reality waiting to be born? Yes, new forms > emerge > in the process of evolution but what reason do we have to think that these > forms already existed in some other realm? DM: Yes and no. They clearly do exist as possibles, otherwise they could not become actual, but until they become actual they are only possible and may never gain actual status. We seem to be getting somewhere. The human level is worth keeping close to mind, but scientists are thinking bigger picture. The idea that possibilities are > somehow out there waiting to become actual... Well, I think that's very, > very goofy. DM: But we have a distinction. The impossible is not available. I can see why Whitehead would be popular among theologians and > the like but I'm skeptical. I'm interested in reading Sneddon's work > simply > because it relates to the MOQ, but based on the extract you dished up I'm > skeptical about that too. > > DM asked dmb: > Do we experience the world Dave? No, we experience rooms, a bit of sky, a > bit of sea, some ground. There is no world here. The world is a fiction we > add to experience to make sense of it. The world as a whole is something > beyond what we can experience (even space men cannot experience the front > and back at the same time). ... > > dmb says: > Oh, come on. Do you really suppose that I meant to say "planet" when I > said > the "world"? No, Dave. I think its safe to say that reality extends beyond > our little rock. DM: Well backtrack Buchanan, well done, you have just postulated something beyond experience. Like the levels, this is a good idea for making sense of experience, but it is not something we experience. And this applies to all experiences, we cannot even experience every possible angle on a bowl of fruit, we fill in the gaps, and so for planets, its contents, the solar system, the cosmos, and its infinite potential for being experienced over on-going time. And if I advocate a global perspective I'm not saying that > we can view the earth from space. Dreams, plans for the future and the > even > the farthest stars are part of our world. (Presently my world centers > around > a new iPod, with which I am deeply in love.) This is an epistemological > issue. It is not astronomical claim, and one would have to be a real space > case to take it that way (Rocket man, going around in circles.) DM: We can view the world from space, but we postulated its wholeness beyond our experience before we could imagine flying away from it. Pirsig drawsour attention to experience, but he also suggests we need an intellectual level. Exploring the possible, imagination, the impossible and other postulates is essential. John D Barrow writes in his Impossibility: "The incontrovertible evidence that Nature is governed by reliable 'laws' allows us to separate the possible from the impossible. Only those cultures for whom there existed a belief that there was a distinction between the possible and the impossible provided natural breeding grounds for scientific progress. But 'impossibility' is not only about science. In the pages that follow we shall look at some of the ways in which the impossible in art, literature, politics, theology, and logic has stimulated the human mind to take unexpected steps: revealing how the concept of the impossible sheds new light on the nature and content of the actual." Well thanks for your efforts here Dave, I think we are seeing the opportunities and possible pitfalls here. I understand your fears about entering enemy territory, but I think that raiding their resources is a more interesting tactic. Regards 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/
