Hello everyone
>From: "marco"<marble@inwind.it>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: Re: MD Self, Free/Determinism : a short essay (again... ;)
>Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 20:59:53 +0200
>
>Hi Dan,
>
>
>many thanks for your prompt answer.
Hi Marco
You're welcome, and thank you too.
>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.
D:
Perhaps it will help to go back to looking at the plant outside the window.
I notice it is green. It is commonsense to believe the plant is really there
and it is really green, in other words, the plant has the property of green
for all who look at it to see. Most scientists tell tell us the color green
exists only in the brain, however. It is all a matter of perception. The
green plant is a green plant in my mind. There may well be "something"
really there outside the window that we have agreed to call a green plant. I
myself quite naturally assume there is. But the green plant I see outside my
window is not an assumption itself. It has value and so it exists but not
apart from mind.
So you see I am not exactly equating "man" and "mind" but I do share your
concern. What we call "mind" has many depths.
>M.
>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...
D:
It seems to me that a clock does not measure the flow of time. We who look
at the clock do the measuring.
M:
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.
D:
I think if we agree there is no "outside" observer, no self independent of
the patterns then we can also perhaps agree there are no patterns
independent of self. The properties we attribute to the things we observe
around us do not lie outside self.
>
>M:
>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).
D:
I have always assumed "all things" means experience. The patterns are the
measure of experience. The materialist believes the idea of mind arises from
matter. The philosophic idealist believes the idea of matter arises from
mind. The MOQ says they are both right. Both represent high quality
intellectual patterns of value. Reality participates through us, we do not
participate in reality as we are not separate from it.
>M:
>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.
D:
I am unsure there is a significant difference between our sentences if taken
to their logical conclusions.
>
>
>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.
D:
I would say evolution is driven by something better. Ultimately the only
separation between entities and their environments is the separation we
create in our own minds.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Dan
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:30 BST