Hi Dan,
many thanks for your prompt answer.
Marco:
>Dan, I was not meaning your whole interpretation of the MOQ, which I don't
>know
>entirely, of course. I was refering to a precise your sentence, that was:
>"The
>image in our mind of reality is reality. There is no other reality". I
>don't
>subsribe to this statement, at least as I can understand it. About the
>danger
>I see in it, I think that it's too absurd and out of any common sense to
>help
>the MOQ to be widely accepted.
Dan:
I take it then you do not subscribe to the statement "man is the measure of
all things" as the MOQ does. Do you feel that statement is also absurd and
outside of any common sense experience? If it is not absurd, then how would
you reconcile your point of view with it?
M:
Firstly, I think you are here equalizing "man" and "mind". An hazardous equation, even if this is not the main point.
Secondly, and this is the point, “to be the measure” is not like “to be the measured reality”, or “to contain the measured reality”: my clock measures time, but it has no sense to state that there's no other time out of my clock. Actually, even if my clock shuts off, time (whatever it is) will endure... At most, we can say that all we can know of time is what's measured by the clock, i.e. the clock is part of the experience we call "time". Actually, in ZAMM RMP writes (my emphasis):
« "Man is the measure of all things." Yes, that's what he is saying about Quality. MAN IS NOT THE SOURCE OF ALL THINGS, as the subjective idealists would say. NOR IS HE THE PASSIVE OBSERVER OF ALL THINGS, as the objective idealists and materialists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. HE IS A PARTICIPANT IN THE CREATION OF ALL THINGS. The measure of all things...it fits. And they taught rhetoric...that fits.»
You see, "to be the measure" fits with "to be a participant". Of course I am a participant of my experience, but I don't *have reality only in my mind*, as IMO a subjective idealist would say.
Thirdly, I’ve always thought (I could be wrong) that this *all things* we as mankind are participating to, means the intellectual level. Biologically, for example, eagles plants and amoebas are participating to all things they can (the biologic and inorganic level).
As last point, I add that my very personal interpretation of the Protagora's sentence has always been that the value of things (what things are) can be measured by their effect on humankind. Just like the amount of time is measured by its effect on the clock. Something completely different from the relativism of saying that a human being is the judge of what's good.
In few words, I think I can well subscribe to the sentence.
Marco:
>I fail to see how it is possible to combine these two
>sentences:
>
>"The image in our mind of reality is reality. There is no other reality".
>and
>"The atom bomb was real".
>
>without concluding that the atom bomb is only in (my? our? Japanese? )
>mind.
Dan:
Yes, this does get confusing at times. I have never seen an atomic explosion
myself, so I have no experience to draw on. How do I know the atomic bomb
was real? The same way I know everything real is real. I have formed
agreements with reality (see William James).
M:
At least, you admit there's confusion. The problem is IMO solved saying that we *are* experience, rather than we *have* experience of something else. Nevertheless, it is necessary to state the existence of something else to explain how it is possible to ... become a more complex experience. The only way to evolve is to interact with something else. There's a proverb: when everything is lost, there's still the future. This future is what's not still composing our own reality ... what we have not still experienced... a necessary "else".
Anyway, in order to avoid confusion, let me suggest to change your sentence to:
"The image in our mind of reality is real, and it's the only reality we can talk about". IM very HO it sounds much more reasonable.
Dan:
There is no "real" reality we experience yet we "know" what is real, otherwise we could not function in society. If, for example, either of us felt the other to be delusionally insane we would not be having this discussion. I take that to be a given, just as it is a given that the atomic bomb was real for anyone who
experiences the high quality intellectual patterns of value we call history.
M:
Of course, even if I don't restrain merely to the social level the *value* of the ... assumption that there's a reality –made of peoples, places, history, art, emotions…- we have to interact with. Every level of existence is experience, and every level of existence *knows* how to interact within its environment, otherwise there could not be any evolution. Like to say, the assumption that there's an.... experienceable reality (what we will possibly be) independent of the already experienced (what we are) is common to all entities, at every level.
Thanks
Marco
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