Hi Platt, Rick,
PLATT:
First I disagree with your assumption that DQ must be a psychical
experience. The vague sense of betterness which describes the DQ
experience can emerge from any and all levels. Alleviation of pain, for
example, is biologically based but psychically felt. All this separation
you insist on is a holdover from mind/matter split that science keeps
insisting on (except as noted).
Listen, if you have any hope of the MOQ being coherent then
you cannot claim that DQ can emerge from any level because then DQ
would be epiphenomenal of that level, and according to the MOQ, DQ
is primary. For this reason, you cannot say the pain from the stove
is a direct experience of DQ if you also admit the pain is caused by
the electrical activity in the nervous system. For DQ to
be properly primary, the low feeling of quality must *precede* the
actions of the nervous system and thus the pain.
So while I agree with you that Pirsig says that the pain describes
the DQ experience, I believe he must be wrong about that if he wishes
to preserve the idea that DQ is primary.
PLATT:
“Matter is contained in
static intellectual patterns” refers to the names and scheme of
relationships we assign to our experience of atoms, electrons,
particles and such.
Well, if "matter within mind" only means that we label and name
matter with intellectual patterns of value (language), then I fail
to see how this is different from the conventional materialist
interpretation, which doesn't have a mind/matter problem. I always
thought "matter within mind" meant that minds create matter.
PLATT:
Well, doesn’t that quote from ZMM about man being a *participant* in
the creation of all things sound like quantum theory? Would you, as a
defender of science, throw out the Copenhagen Interpretation? Also
you stick by your assumption that mind is strictly an emergent from
physical processes in the human brain. But what if mind has been
around in various forms ever since . . . whenever?
The CI (Copenhagen Interpretation) is philosophy, not science. The
science of quantum mechanics ends with the calculations of the
Schrodinger equation and the extent to which these calculations
agree with observation. The CI picks up from here and interprets
what *might* be happening during quantum events. The CI is not
substantiated by science. It lies outside science. Many non-scientists
and even some scientists have given the CI itself a very broad
interpretation to mean that human consciousness participates in the
creation of reality, usually with the pretext of having some other
ax to grind.
But it's no matter to the discussion at hand. While you've claimed
that you must have been drunk to believe that humans can create rocks,
you seem happy to admit that human minds participate in their
creation, and that's good enough for me.
So if we run with this belief, then when you look out over
your backyard, you conclude that whatever lies below the grass and the
thinnest layer of dirt does not yet exist, because you have not ever
directly experienced it. When you take a shovel to it, you participate
in the creation of the dirt which you appear to unearth, and when
your shovel clunks against something, you smile thinking about the
wondrous Quality experience that has just created the static pattern
of inorganic quality we mundanely call a rock. Before that moment the
rock belonged to the flux, the Void, a cloud of quantum mechanical
probability distributions, or Quality, and couldn't properly be called
anything you know. However, if you take your rock and have it
carbon-dated, you find out it is 11 million years old. So something
has to be wrong here.
So I ask once again. Is MOQ contradictory when it simultaneously
claims that man participates in the creation of rocks and that rocks
were created in an evolutionary framework that pre-dates man? Your
fudge is that "what if mind has been around in various forms ever
since . . . whenever?". Doesn't Pirsig clearly say that man
participates in the creation of *all* things? You seem to disagree,
suggesting that non-human minds participated in the creation of rocks.
What minds would those be before the biological level evolved?
Other rocks?
Glenn
PLATT:
PS. If you find too much rhetoric in this post, Rick’s to blame for
reminding me of the value of rhetoric to score points. (-: I’ll try
to restrain myself next time.
Oh, you mean the bit about the "matadors"? Shame on you, Rick.
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