From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jan 13 2003 - 15:49:09 GMT
Hi John,
Thanks for the reply! Sorry for the length of this post, again.
> Do you agree with Pirsigs idea 'a has caused b' means 'b favors
> pre-condition a'. While reading this I was thinking yeah your saying
> it but
> I'm not agree with you, what am I missing? Anyone else got an opinion?
Well, I think Pirsig's formulation is an attempt to put causality in
another light. I agree with him, basically: On second reflection on
Pirsig's words, I think he is a monist here, and the monism goes by the
equavilent words of 'value' and 'quality'. Below is another point of
view, but it's a dualistic one of some sort.
Let me quote (translated from Dutch) a book about the life and work of
Thomas of Aquino: it's written from a theological point of view, but
nevertheless: " God creates, in a sense, the world continuesly.
Everything is being carried by his power, and, if the pre-conditions for
possible actualization are satisfied by a soul, it arises through God's
universal power." I admit, it's a bit obscure maybe, but what Aquino is
saying, according to the author J. Hoogveld: We have the potentiality to
actualize things, but God has created this ability for us to actualize
potentiality. A further quote can make it more clear: "We are determined
to make choices." So, we are allowed to shape nature, so to say, and we
can say that we are able to 'create' a sculpture. But according to
Aquino (in Hoogveld's and my reading), a better description would be not
'creating', but 'steering of nature in a particular direction'. This is
true because we can leave the raw stone as it is, or we can choose to
transform it into a sculpture. Either way, the possibility of choosing
this or that is determined by God's power: we can't create the stone, we
only can mold it.
Causal explanations denote the path of how stones or (any thing) are
molded in history. But the experience that we find a stone in reality at
all; this is simply given (although the stone has a history of itself of
course, and is 'created' in the history of the earth. But this is causal
thinking at work again).
Not sure if I make my point clear. I referred to a thread of some time
ago,
with Roger and Platt and others. Here's a link:
http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/0208/0297.html
Actually, besides Aquino's philosophy/theology, there's is the
consciousness-as-an-epiphenomenon discussion in philosophy. It occured
to me yesterday that there's a link with this philosophy and the above.
Experience just happens to be here in us humans, but you can imagine a
world, even with organisms with functioning brains, but without
consciousness. This philosophy is perfectly understandable, because if
you assume that causal explanations are the only way to 'explain'
reality, you can leave the consciousness as a phenomenon out of the
story: it's therefore an epiphenomenon.
The only difference with Aquino here is that he (and I) believes not
only in matter-mind causation (which can lead to the epiphenomenon-story
roughly!) but in mind-matter causation as well, to use modern
terminology.
> The only thing I can't tolerate is intolerance.
I agree.
Greetings, Patrick from the Mountain.
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