Hey Erin,
Here we go...
> BOEREE
> "I believe the world is composed of nothing but qualities -- colors,
sounds,
> temperatures, shapes, textures, movements, images, feelings, and so on.
RICK:
Of course, in the MOQ the world is composed of Quality. However, "[t]he MOQ
is subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitimate
human knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses
provide (LILA p113)." So for all intents and purposes, we can safely agree
with Boeree on this one.
>
BOEREE
> Unlike materialists, I do not reduce these qualities to atoms or energies
or
> anything "physical". To me, these atoms and such are just explanatory
> devices, good for helping us to predict and control, especially when we
can't
> see what's going on. But they are nothing without the qualities they
refer
> to.
RICK:
Sounds good to me so far...
BOEREE
> Unlike idealists like Bishop Berkeley, however, I don't think that all of
> these qualities require the presence of a mind to exist -- some do, but
others
> don't. When the tree falls in the forest, the sound happens, whether
there is
> someone there to hear it or not.
RICK:
Uh oh... The problem with this is that when the tree falls in the
forest... an 'air wave' happens. It's whether that wave can truly be called
'sound' that everyone's been stumped on for thousands of years. I find it
amusing that Boeree can assert this with such confidence.
It's a semantic puzzle. If 'sound' is the wave, then the tree makes a
sound whether or not someone's there. If 'sound' is the sensation of the
wave interacting with an ear drum, then the tree doesn't make a sound.
Same with or problem (I think): If Intellectual Quality is defined as
'historcial accuracy' we get a different result than if it is defined as
'coherence'. I think the ultimate point is that choosing one or the other
requires a judgment call as to which value is more important than the other.
The MoQ, unfortunately, gives us almost no guidance is how to rank competing
values within a level like this.
BOEREE
Further, I believe there are plenty of
> qualities -- an infinity of them, perhaps -- that we do not and cannot
> perceive at all. Some animals, for example, can hear sounds and see
colors we
> cannot. These sounds and colors are every bit as real and rich as a high
C or
> blue-green.
RICK:
Okay, I can go with this...
BOEREE
> On the other hand, some of these qualities we call "matter" and some we
call
> "mind." "Matter" includes the ones that emphasize form, resistance, and
> especially separateness from mind. The ones we call "mind" include those
> qualities that are more elusive, more personal, harder to share. Both are
> real, neither is superior in some way. There are as well qualities of
time,
> space, number, causality, value, and so on, that are hard to place in
either
> category. "
RICK:
Well, this is obviously just a play on the traditional mind/matter
dichotomy. The MOQ acknowledges this distinction as being of high value,
but it also acknowledges that there are better ways of looking at things.
To his credit, Boeree, in the last line here, point out some the platypuses
of the mind/matter dichotomy.
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