Rog,Marco,Elephant, All
> ROG:
> William James explains how direct experience can be "taken twice." Certain
> aggregations of experience can be taken to refer to "external reality" and
> other combinations of experience as internal states. In "Does Consciousness
> Exist? he writes that ..."pure experience...act in one context as objects and
> in another context figure as mental states." He goes on to write that (like
> Pirsig's learning baby) we learn to trace lines in the "chaos of experiences"
> to form both "the inner history of a person" and an "impersonal 'objective'
> world." Both are static concepts derived from pure experience. ( 3WD care to
> add anything?)
3WD
>From James perspective, no, you've grabbed the essentials. But Ken
Wilbur's use of the interior/exterior, left hand/ right hand paths,
subjective/objective, intersubjective/interobjective, I/we/it/it, (or in
Marco's terms
"inside/outside") split may help muddy things.
In Pirsig's PODV paper he relates SOM to the static levels indicating
that the bottom two are what SOMists call objective (outside) and the
upper two are subjective (inside). I think that many (maybe even
Pirsig) are confusing his relating of this "portrayal of SOM" to the MoQ
with how to make "inside/outside" split within the MoQ framework itself.
If "Quality is ..direct experience" and "..."a thing that has
no value (quality) does not exist. The thing has not created the value.
The
value has created the thing." So for a "thing" to exist is must have
"direct experience" which implies that some type of "internal" existence
is present in all "things." So if we apply Wilbur to the MoQ's static
levels we should split the horizonal hierarchy vertically giving each
pattern an internal and external component or value. This is how
Wilbur's "Four Corners of the Kosmos" diagram he presents in " A Brief
History of Everything" (which I overlayed with Pirsig's levels and sent
to everyone who ask for it some time back) arranges reality.
Platt has been trying (futilely in appears) to make this same point to
Glen in the "MD criticisims of DQ" thread. In the latest we read.
> You do not have any empirical knowledge that I am “experiential” other
> than my behavior. Some smart people have deduced that particles,
> atoms, molecules, amoebas, etc. are experiential based on their
> behavior, among them Konrad Lorenz who wrote: “If one observes an
> amoeba in its natural habitat one would not hesitate to attribute to it the
> power of subjective experience. What the organism learns about its
> environment can be expressed in the simple phrase, ‘It’s better here’
> or ‘It’s not so good here.’” Bertrand Russell has opined: “So far as
> quantum theory can say at present, atoms might as well be
> possessed of free will, limited however to one of several possible
> choices." Pirsig, citing quantum physics, says “Particles ‘prefer’ to do
> what they do.”
> PLATT:
> Pay particular attention to the phrases, “pure quality for the cells,” and
> “From the cell’s point of view sex is pure DQ.” How many biologists do
> you suppose would say in a speech to their colleagues, “The cell is
> acting this way because it knows what it likes and from its point of view
> its doing what it thinks is the most moral thing to do.” Not many, I
> wager. And that’s because biologists can’t measure a cell’s point of
> view or what it feels like to be a cell any more than they can measure
> yours or mine or what we’re feeling at this moment.
The last line bears repeating, "And that’s because biologists can’t
measure a cell’s point of view or what it feels like to be a cell any
more than they can measure yours or mine or what we’re feeling at this moment."
This becomes "THE PROBLEM" with both Pirsig's and Wilber's scenarios.
Wilbur 'names' it 'interpretation'. The "interior" values, while they
will have some corresponding "external" value that can be experienced,
(ie 'external' brainwaves correspond 'internal' thoughts though we don't
have a clue exactly how) the only way to access the "internal" values is
though talking to the "subject" and interpreting that experience. At
the human level this immediatley leads to all the other problems
-language, worldviews, lying in all its forms, etc. Moving off the human
level we may just be on the brink of Dr Doolittle's "talking to the
animals world" with a tiny number of apes, maybe some grey parrots,
possibly a dophin, but even if that truely happens the problem of
'interpretation' remains and grows larger with each advance. Move that
to the cell and quark level and "THE INTERPRETATION PROBLEM" approachs
infinite.
I'm think'n that we need to get the biotech companies work'n on the
"instant mystic" pill. Project Code Name: God in a Bottle, with a
adult-proof lid of course.
3WD
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
