Hi David B. and all,
DAVID B.
> Jonathan and all: It seems that these issues are about something
important,
> but I can't put my finger on it. JM is responding to the idea of NOT
> trashing subjects objects altogether, how they compare to static
patterns
> and some other fancy stuff like the nature of time. There is also some
huge
> explosions and full frontal nudity. Not really....
David, I agree that there is something important eluding us. The more we
discuss it, the more I smell it; Gosh, I can almost TASTE it.
> JONATHAN
> > What it comes down to is that the 4-layers of patterns is a tool,
not an
> > ontology. The only ontology in the MoQ is the Quality idea itself...
DAVID B.
> Hmmm. Well, it seems to be that Quality or DQ is a
> mystery. It can't be defined and so it can't fit into ontological
> categories. I mean, Quality isn't a thing and ontological schemes are
about
> "things". Here's a few words about ontology from the Oxford Companion
to
> Philosophy...
It seems innapropriate to consider Q as the ontological base and then
try and place it within an ontological category. The dictionary
definition that David gives doesn't help much. That "existing THINGS
belong to different categories" is nothing to do with the ontology. The
ontology is the basis by which THINGS EXIST, not their classification.
Pirsig's version of radical empiricism places the basis of existance in
quality (the empiricism being that quality is something PERCEIVED).
[David asked about TIME and Jonathan replied with reference to Kant and
Einstein]
DAVID B.
>There's no doubt about it. Kant was a
> staggering genius, but Einstein changed everything. But I think Kant's
area
> was really epistemology and he considered time to be a CATEGORY of
> Perception. Sort of like a built-in setting for our sensory ograns
filter
> reality. Certainly was an SOM view, eh? Anyway, its possible that you
mixed
> up ontological categories with epistemological or perceptual issues.
> Definitely connents, but very different branches of metaphysics. You
know.
Could be! Despite the *Ph*D, I never formally studied philosophy
formally. I don't think that Kant was rally trying to explain time.
Rather, he was interested in placing morals within his ontology, thus
claimed (rather tortuously) that morality was like time, i.e.
intrinsically known by man. Pirsig's approach makes things much simpler.
He starts (in ZAMM) saying that man has an innate sense of quality, and
then equates quality with morals.
DAVID B.
> Hmmm. As I understand it, time, space, matter and
> energy are so inter-related that we can think of them as different
> manifestations of the same mystery. The theory of relativity and his
famous
> equation, E=mc2, paint it this way. [snip] the really cool part
> of the equation is the c2. It shows that the amount of energy in the
mass is
> directly proportional to the speed of light, which of course is a
time/space
> thing. So you can see the universe in this little equation.
To me the coolest part of relativity is its axiom - that the speed of
light is a constant!
The speed of light APPEARS constant when we measure it within the same
frame of reference. If the observer and observed are in different frames
of reference, the speed of light appears to be different. However,
rather than accepting that it is the speed of light that differs,
Einstein's axiom assumes the speed of light to be constant, and
consequently, the flow of time must be different in different frames of
reference. The point is not that Einstein's view is more "correct". It
is that Einstein's explanation turns out to be a lot simpler, and led to
his simple equation relating matter and energy. In classical physics the
dimensions of mass, time and distance are treated as entirely separate
(hence the 3 basic units of the SI system: the kilogramme, second and
metre). In relativity, the interrelationships between three become much
clearer.
Have a good weekend everyone,
Jonathan
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