From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Oct 27 2002 - 17:39:31 GMT
Paco, Jonathan,
Having had a good dinner, I'm ready to attack- myself (it was written
too hastily, because dinner was waiting!).
Pat wrote:
> I think evolutionary (natural selection, game theory etc.)
> explanations
> of purpose-full behavior are vere insightful and all, and I actually
> see
> a beauty in these explanations. It can also explain, to a large
> extent,
> complexity in organisms and eco-systems. But to make the conceptual
> leap
> that complex forms and processes are purpose-full, I think is
> essentially flawed- it smuggles, so to say, DQ into essential pure
> sq's.
This is a rather self-contradictory argument, because I had two
different connotations of the word 'explanation' in mind. Sorry. But
what I had in mind is just the difference between epistemology (which
concerns our knowledge of the world) and ontology (which concerns the
question of what is real). There are some admirable 'nerds' walking
around with T-shirts with the print "Ontology is Epistemology" (or the
other way around) on them (cool, huh?). And I think here is our
disagreement, Jonathan and Paco: IMO ontology is NOT equal to
epistemology. The first is alive, the latter is not. The first has DQ
and sq's, the latter only sq's. The first is the territory, the latter
is the map.
Jonathan, I appreciate your scientific orientation, but let me remind
you this is a forum where, among other things, the assumptions of an
'objective' science are discussed. If in your opinion I kill a
discussion by examining the meaning of the words 'emergence' and
'purpose' not in a one-sided scientific point of view (an 'OM'), but in
terms of experience and quality (IMO a MoQ point of view), then indeed
our discussion ends.
Greetings, Patrick.
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