John, Wim,
Just to respond to a couple of your (John's) questions,
SCOTT PREV: "The pattern is: in any situation, certain possibilities exist, and
as they are observed and evaluated, some gain higher probability, and hence
become more likely to happen (become static patterns)."
JOHN: Perhaps I fail to understand, or am reading your 'observing and evaluating'
too literally, but this seems another form of God, a 'deus ex machina'. I am
also acutely aware that we are approaching the limits of language here. I
note you go on to say "It doesn't assume an entity outside of the evolving
entities, since the evolving entities "just are" Quality evolving", but I
can't reconcile the two statements.
The "reconciliation" is that the observing and evaluating is also the
observed and evaluated, in polar opposition/conjunction, in mutual
creation/destruction, etc., so there is no third party to guide the
action. This is, of course, nonsense to a subject/object mentality, like
ours. I don't think it is beyond the limits of language so much as being
beyond the limits of our semantics. We would need to rethink how we
intend to use language.
SCOTT: "All experience requires a continuity on the part of the experiencer
and the experienced, but the experience is at the same time a change in the
experiencer and an experience of change. So continuity requires change,
change requires continuity, and they are opposites."
JOHN: Yes. This is where I agree that logic and rationality, that must operate in
terms of dualities, run into the realm of paradox, since reality at some
fundamental level is not about duality.
Actually, I would like to shift the meaning of "reality" to say
something different. Although in this forum we tend to say that only
Quality is ultimately real, we could also say that Quality is the source
of the real (what is experienced), and that because it is always DQ/sq
it is always a many/one. (The mistake of dualism is to assume that
either pole of the polarity makes sense in isolation.) Now with that, I
would argue that logic and rationality are *also* this same DQ/sq play.
The mistake is to assume that rationality is a tool to describe reality.
Instead it is *more* reality (and, being closer to the Logos, more real,
if one accepts that neo-Platonist position).
SCOTT PREV: "all entities are "Quality evolving" to emphasize that the DQ/sq
split is not into two realms of existence, but one realm that can observe
and modify itself -- more than that, it IS the observation and modification
of itself."
JOHN: I don't quite grasp this. What is the "it" that is "the observation and
modification of itself."?
Restatement: Entities consist of their self-observation and
self-modification. There is no "thing" that "contains" that
self-observation and self-modification.
WIM: "The next type of evolution might imply the discovery of stratagems
employing the "logic of contradictory identity" and "metaphors, paradoxes and
experience that isn't immediately translated into an opinion"
JOHN: I like your comments in this post Wim, and it seems to me that this
statement points to a way forward, a praxis. This seems to me what the
mystics are researching. Scott seems to point to this also in the section
where he elaborates on the "logic of contradictory identity", which, he
concludes, permeates every experience.
So do I (like your comments). It seems to me the only way for this to
happen is to drop the idea that metaphysics is a description of reality,
and is instead an art form. I realize that I don't know how to do this,
that I am still describing. Oh well.
- Scott
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