Hi Platt:
PLATT:
What you seem to miss in all our discussions is the interpenetration of
DQ at all levels from protons to people. Electrons and atoms of the
nervous system are experiential. They are imbued with and respond to
DQ as do viruses and amoebas.
You do not have any empirical knowledge, radical or otherwise, that
electrons and atoms in the nervous system or anywhere else are
experiential. If this is what MOQ subscribes to then it contradicts itself.
Panexperientialism is a conjecture probably inspired by the fallacy of
division, which states that a property of something (consciousness of
humans) must apply to its parts (electrons and atoms), followed by the
fallacy of composition, which states that a property of parts
(consciousness of protons and atoms) also applies to the whole (viruses
or amoebas).
PLATT:
You ignored that part of Roger’s
response that said: “As Pirsig's theory is pan-experiential, the
experience referred to by "immediate experience" applies to any entity
(be it a sub-atomic particle, plant, worm, human being etc.) that is
derived from immediate experience.”
This raises another problem for the MOQ. Because now we have Pirsig
believing that humans participate in the creation of "all" things *and*
believing in panexperientialism. If sub-atomic particles can experience
DQ, then sub-atomic particles can participate in the creation of rocks.
So now there are two ways rocks can be created, and for a metaphysics to
be clear, it should explain how to differentiate a rock that is created by
one method or the other.
PLATT:
I admit no such thing [about humans participating in the creation of
rocks]. Your sneaking in “human” to modify mind leaves
the wrong impression of my view because you’ve ignored all along the
theory of panexperientialism that I have put forward as answer to many
of your mind-dependent questions. Mind is not contained in the human
brain: it is DQ, direct experience, pure awareness. As such it
interpenetrates all, as explained above.
You are welcome to your view and pardon me for not noticing.
I thought otherwise because you defended Pirsig's ZMM statement that
included humans in the creation equation. However, since
panexperientialism also includes humans, I get the impression this still
leaves open your saying some day that humans participate in the creation
of all things, like rocks...
PLATT:
As mentioned before, experiments show electrical activity in the brain
can occur prior to it being consciously experienced and subsequently
conceptualized as “pain.”
Yes. The pain is most likely triggered by this electrical activity.
PLATT:
In the hot stove scenario, the low value
experienced by the electrons which are disturbed by the radiant heat of
the hot stove is transferred to nerve tissue cells which experience low
value and pass their experience up through the nervous system to the
synapses of the brain which experience the low value and send a
signal to the heated area to remove itself from the low value situation.
All this internal goings on you subconsciously experience as low value
and you react to it by getting your ass off the hot stove before you can
exclaim “Ouch!”
OK. Here (I think) you put the "low value" before the substance in every
sub-event leading up to the feeling of pain and well before the "ouch!",
thus keeping DQ primary for every sub-event. So for the hot stove event
taken as a whole, we have a constant interleaving of biological and DQ
events that must cross over between physical space and some other unknown
"space" inhabited by DQ. While I almost always hesitate to employ Occam's
Razor, this time it seems appropriate.
If what you say is true, then DQ is very busy keeping track of every
electron in the universe (not to mention all other static quality),
deciding the context in which it exists and doling out value to each on a
moment by moment basis. For example, DQ has to decide whether to have each
electron experience low-value just before it is disturbed by a certain
amount of heat (as is the case when the electron exists inside a human
sitting on a hot stove) or to experience high-value just before it
is disturbed by a certain amount of heat (as is the case when the electron
exists inside the sun or inside bacteria that live near under-sea volcanic
vents). Of course all this is possible in theory, but the inefficiency of
it strains belief.
Getting back to the stove, it seems much more likely that the electrons,
being in an excited state, act *themselves* as signals to the nerve tissue
in your skin, in which case the addition of a low-value experience is
superfluous. Not only does this give the electrons a purpose (in your
version they didn't seem to have one), but this is what we see empirically.
PIRSIG:
...From the cells' point of view sex is pure Dynamic
Quality, the highest Good of all.” (LILA, Chap. 15)
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.
Agreed. I guess you and Pirsig *do* know what it feels like to be a cell,
for except as some rhetorical device I do not know what else could account
for the certitude of your prose.
PLATT:
They like other scientists are content to look at the surfaces of the
world and proclaim them the world.
I don't agree with your general attitude. Scientists look as far as they
can look but the good ones stop short of making statements that are not
based on any kind of evidence. Would you like them to make statements like
this in speeches to colleagues?
PLATT:
Materialists don’t have a mind/matter problem? That’s a laugh. There’s
a whole group of scientists down in Santa Fe headed by physicist
Murray Gellman who are trying to solve the mind/matter problem. David
Chalmers who has been studying this question for years and is
recognized by the scientific community as preeminent in the field has
concluded that subjective consciousness continues to defy all
objectivist explanations. “Toward this end, I propose that conscious
experience be considered a fundamental feature, irreducible to
anything more basic. The idea may seem strange at first, but
consistency seems to demand it.”
You are referring to the group that is mainly studying chaos, not the
mind/matter problem. David Chalmers may be a scientist but he doesn't
sound like much of a materialist. I'd be interested to know why he thinks
"consistency seems to demand it".
PLATT:
None of the theories of science are science. The philosophical
premise of science that only propositions that can be empirically
verified are true cannot be empirically verified. Mathematics and logic
on which science is built cannot be verified by pointing a finger at them.
The Schrodinger equation you refer to is “concept.” Observations are
also “concepts” when intellectualized. You seem to work hard to keep
anything “mental” or “conceptual” out of science, an impossibility of
course.
What do you mean? I'm merely pointing out that the Copenhagen
Interpretation is more philosophy than science. That's why it's called an
interpretation, not a theory. The CI is speculation that cannot be tested
by the scientific method. You're saying science claims propositions (like
DQ or CI) cannot be true because it doesn't lend itself to the scientific
method. Science does not say this. CI may be true, it's just that its
truth is in doubt. I only brought this up because you said CI is
"according to science", when it's more precise to say CI is "an
interpretation of a scientific theory". When we're lazy, or when precise
distinctions are not important, we use 'science' as an umbrella term for
things in and around science, but I don't think we should in discussions
like these.
Also, this business about turning the scientific method on itself and
showing it is fundamentally flawed is unfair. You're trumping up
science to be a metaphysics and it doesn't claim to be. It's the SOM
strawman again. The scientific method only applies to phenomena, and
the scientific method is not a phenomena. The MOQ, which truly is a
metaphysics, does attempt to cover more than science, but this should be
no surprise once you're clear about what science is. You are either still
not clear on this, or your misrepresentations are intentional. You use the
same rhetorical tricks as Pirsig. You're no different. You say you admire
science and then you pull these stunts.
PLATT:
Mind is not located inside the brain, nor outside the brain either: those
are physical boundaries with simple location, and yet a good part of
mind exists not merely in physical space, but in quantum space,
mental space and aesthetic space, none of which are simple location
but all of which are as real (or more real) than physical.
This sentence sounds contradictory. The brain exists in physical space.
You say the mind is not inside or outside the brain, so the mind is not
in physical space. Then you say "a good part of mind exists not merely
in physical space", which suggests that part of it does.
PLATT:
If an electron can simultaneously be in two places at once in quantum
space/time, then rocks can simultaneously appear in historical space/time and
human mental space/time.
Why is that? Because a rock is like an electron?
Platt, in past discussions with you we've had disagreements but they've
always been grounded in a world-view we could sensibly discuss. In fact,
that's why I enjoy talking to you. But in this post you've retreated to a
world-view that is extremely speculative and somewhat bizarre.
I suspect that "the normally sensible Platt" has been driven to such
excesses in order to argue his way through a contradiction in the MOQ
illustrated by rock creation. A similar thing happened in the Dec. 2000 MF
when problems with the MOQ were discussed, and it was suggested that all
MOQ's problems boiled down to the problem of "self". Someone then
suggested that this could be resolved by realizing that the self is really
an illusion. And since this is consistent with Hinduism, it adds a certain
respectability to it. But I'm not happy with it. I feel quite certain I'm
not a fiction. I'd much rather retrace my steps and try to figure out
which part of this metaphysics is wrong that would lead to such a
conclusion.
PLATT:
Your physical, material, reductionist
scientific outlook inhibits you to a rocky world. But that world leaves so
much unexplained, so many platypi unaccounted for, like a coherent
explanation of values, life and mind itself, that it takes a metaphysics
like the MOQ to provide the explanatory power required to fill the gaping
holes of experience that science, by its own admission, cannot fill.
You think it's coherent, but I am fairly certain it is not, and the
explanatory power which you so admire is so flexible that MOQ usually
agrees with all schools of thought, explaining little; and the gaping
holes of experience you speak of are often filled with fiction, delusion,
or occult phenomena that are readily passed off as real so long as Pirsig
says they have value.
Glenn
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