MD Self, Free/Determinism : a short essay (again... ;)

From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Aug 13 2001 - 10:18:35 BST

Denis
Your essay triggered a whole string of comments and as you
haven't replied your sojourn may be over by now, but I couldn't
resist :-).

Self and Will ("free" goes without saying) is one and the same, as
is Consciousness ....for good measure.
   
> But still according to the MOQ, the Self isn't part of Reality, it's
> part of the Map. The only thing that acts in this evolutionary dance
> of dynamic leaps and static patterning is Quality itself. Nothing
> else. Therefore, by virtue of that ole' Buddhist trick ("The Self does
> not exists, Little Grasshopper") the question is dissolved.

Even the map analogy isn't perfect because it implies an objective
"terrain". In my opinion a metaphysics IS the reality, nothing fell
outside the subject/object metaphysics and nothing can fall
outside the MoQ - even DQ is part of it.
 
> Or is it ? The more I think about it the more I believe this to be the
> MOQ mystic answer, but not the MOQ rational answer. And there *should*
> be a rational one.

Remember that it is the mystics who are the toughest opponents
and the ones who insist on keeping the map/terrain divide open.

> Because on the static side of the MOQ, the Self is a pattern of value
> that is felt with as much force as the desire for social recognition,
> hunger or gravity. Therefore, it makes no sense to talk about the
> other patterns of value but ignore this one, only because it's
> inconvenient... Our memory creates a sense of continuity from which we
> deduce our Identity, which is no less real than the value of paper
> money (a strange comparison seen from the SOM angle... ;). The Self is
> an Intellectual Pattern of ourselves, to which we attribute qualities
> and flaws, a past and a future. This image is partly constructed from
> the ideas that influence us, parly from what images other people
> reflect back at us, and partly from our biochemical makeup. This
> *creation* then evolves with time, but in the end it's nothing more
> than the reflection of the values which compose us in the mirror of
> the Intellect.

Agree! "Self" is an intellectual pattern - along with Self-
Consciousness - but this assertion is meaningless before Q-
intellect is defined correctly. You will probably spot old Bo with his
SOL idea again, yet as long as Intellect is seen as "the thinking
faculty" (mind) the MoQ will be (in Struan Hellier's words) "an ugly
complication" (...of the SOM..in my words). With the mind-intellect
at large, the statement that self-(consciousness) is an intellectual
pattern, will be inverted (Q-intellect an attribute to self) ....and we
are solidly back at the idealist stand-point of SOM.

As you know unto nausea my opinion is that the Quality intellect is
the value of the S/O divide, consequently every intellectual pattern
contains an element of duality: A self different from other; a space
different from infinity; a time different from from eternity ...etc etc
etc...etc!!!

Regarding memory I'm not sure of it as the (sole) source. All living
things remember and compare observations with previous
experience and thus learn - but maybe it played a role. I still lean
to (your) idea about language as the social pattern that ....went off
on a purpose of its own ...and became Q-intellect.

> Nevertheless, in the jungle of pattern that make up an individual,
> this IntPoV has a crucial role, since all of our patterns revolve
> around this one : not because it *owns* them but because it REPRESENTS
> them.

This I find incongruous with itself or at least I don't agree. Intellect
is the highest value, but does not "represent" the lower ones, they
are in their own right ... if you see things from inside the MoQ that
is, and don't believe that there is a Godlike vista outside it all. And
if you ask from what standpont I see this, it is the probing 5th level,
but that is inside the MoQ and from there Intellect is taken down
several pegs.
Bo

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