Hi Platt, Roger, PE, Thracian, Jeremy and Marco,
Thank-you all for your illuminating contributions. After a few days off,
just reading and not posting, I still feel full confidence with my
original position.
ROGER
Anyways, I am actually pretty
convinced that I have no material disagreement with either Marco or
Jonathan.
I sense we are arguing more out of inertia than any fundamental
difference
in views. Let me know if you disagree.
I do indeed agree with this. Roger, I have "known" you long enough in
this forum to recognise and appreciate your stance. Similarly, I think
you have a fair appreciation of my own position. As a result, our
various arguments are often quite productive. Unfortunately, I do not
get the feeling that Elephant KNOWS us in the same way, and it often
seems that he is merly interested in scoring cheap points - a pity
really, because he sometime has something valuable to contribute.
> JONATHAN
>>> Let me first address this less serious difference in approach.
Elephant
>>> is taking the mystical approach.
>>> "Atoms" aren't reality itself - they're an invention of the human
mind,
>>> so it would be plain silly to give them attributes like "awareness".
I
>>> myself tend to take an almost opposite approach. I agree that atoms
are
>>> an invention of the human mind, but maintain that this and other
similar
>>> inventions ARE reality.
>>
>> ELEPHANT:
>> Er, how do you manage that? You must be quite a good contortionist.
I
>> mean, normally we say that the stuff that's invented is invented,
don't we?
>> I do.
If Elephant would do me the courtesy of thinking this though, he might
see that the apparent paradox in my position is a metaphysical platypus.
Lest anyone think that my statement above is completely off the wall,
lets see what RMP has to say:
RMP (ZAMM, Ch. 20 - author's italics rendered as capitals):
"In our highly complex organic state we advanced
organisms to respond to our environment with an
invetsion of marvelous analogues. We invent earth
and heaven, 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."
Now everyone can see where the *AS IF* comes from. Donny always used to
remind us about it, and I used it many times BEFORE elephant tried to
teach me how to use it. I myself have tried to teach elephant that the
*AS IF* he wants to apply just to the awareness of the atoms applies
ALSO to the atoms themselves.
The *AS IF* is to remind us that in metaphysics, Invention, Discovery
and Reality cannot really be distinguished.
Did Newton Invent, Discover or Realize his laws of motion? IMO, the
answer is all three!
Roger made a comment about Marco's English, and I am fully with Roger on
this one.
Marco, not only is your writing very clear, but you make some very
important observations on the etiology of words. You and Elephant both
did some good work on the word "AWARE".
ELEPHANT:
This suggests that for the anglo-saxons "gewaere" is a word connecting
being
and action. Accordingly a "gewaere" thing is something that is or was
*actively being*, or alternatively *is what it is as a result of it's
own
(ongoing or completed) activity*: "ge-waere".
This is a nice definition that doesn't solve the problem. It all hinges
on the distinction between active and passive.
When you say a volcano is ACTIVE, does you mean that it is aware? Is
your bank account aware? When you deny the awareness of atoms, what
about the carbon atoms inACTIVATED charcoal?
IMO, the active/passive distinction only has meaning in a subject/object
sense. I am reminded of Douglas Adams (HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy),
who told of mice who studied human behaviour by running round mazes in
particular patterns, and then observing the conclusions that the humans
reached. Who is active and who is passive? Who is subject and who is
object? Man or mouse?
As the MoQ veterans should know, I accept the subject-object concept as
a working tool, but claim that we always have to be AWARE of how we are
making the S/O split.
MARCO
Actually, the Q- suffix used on this forum to distinguish
the MOQ terms by the common terms is a good solution.
So Q-morality is not morality, Q-society is not society,
and so on. That's why I've been talking of Q-awareness.
Sorry Marco, but I don't like it. I think it is defeatist. It is the
same as what elephant is doing with the term "AS IF," to suggest that we
don't really mean what we are saying. Some time ago, Struan proposed
using XXXX instead of Quality, for very similar reasons.
ZAMM is subtitled "An Inquiry into Values" and Lila is subtitled "An
Inquiry into Morals."
I don't think it useful to say that the books are really about Q-value,
and Q-morals.
Neither is it useful to take your proposal to the extreme and state that
"Q-atoms Q-are Q-aware."
When I came up with my "electrons are au courant", the "au courant" came
out of an ENGLISH thesaurus as an equivalent for "aware". This is not
the French for aware. In French, "au courant" means literally "with the
current", hence my little joke in applying the term to an electron. But
"au courant" is also used to mean "with it", "trendy", "on-the-ball".
Electrons are "with it". They are not "square" and obstinately refuse to
conform to fit our mechanistic defintions - those square holes we try to
put them in.
Another useful non-English word with similar connotations is the
Sanskrit "rta". I especially want to introduce it here to counteract the
implication that electrons are rebellious.
LILA, ch.30:
One of Phaedrus's old school texts, written by M. Hirriyana,
contained a good summary: "Rta, which etymologically stands
for 'course' originally meant 'cosmic order,' the maintenance
of which was the purpose of all the gods; and later it also
came to mean 'right,' so that the gods were conceived as
preserving the world not merely from physical disorder but
also from moral chaos. The one idea is implicit in the other:
and there is order in the universe because its control is in
righteous hands. . . ."
About a page before this, Pirsig explains how the Proto-Indo-European
"rt" is the root of a whole set of words that (mostly) "have a vague
thesaurus-like similarity to Quality".
...
RMP:
When all these meanings were strung together a fuller picture
of the RT morpheme emerged. RT referred to the "first,
created, beautiful repetitive order of moral and esthetic
correctness."
So when I agree with Platt's statement that "Atoms are aware", I do so
on the assumption that his statement is one about cosmic order (rta).
Jonathan
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