From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Tue May 31 2005 - 02:17:54 BST
Scott, I don't disagree - I just see a nihilistic conclusion if you
drive down that track without a though for pragmatic value.
Where I say "... of everything real". Clearly that is just linguistic
like everything else - not just human, though in this case I happen to
be one. Everything is semiotic, the metaphor of some intelligence,
ascribing significance in patterns "observed" in the broadest sense.
Without that symbolic patterning, we would just have the continuum of
the "out there", right ?
You see me as constrained by the "modernist" framework - I just see it
as one lingusitic sub-set that needs its boundaries pushed out to a
point where it is no longer constraining.
Ian
On 5/31/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@localnet.com> wrote:
> Ian,
>
> Ian said:
> To cut a long story short - I'm pressed for time right now ...
> I think this encapsulates the issue ... You said
> Explanation is another modernist way of thinking, an avoidance of
> recognizing that the real problem is explanation itself.
>
> I say
> In which case - not me - I am definitely beyond modern and post
> modern. I had a whole thread running earlier on "quality of
> explanation" being the key issue - the point being that it is far more
> than objective inductive rationale. Therefore as you implicitely point
> out - I do (openly) use "physics" as meaning the vehicle for this
> "explanation of everything real" not just the tangible / empirical
> world.
>
> Scott:
> You are continuing -- as I see it -- in the modernist/SOM/nominalist
> framework. The issue I am trying to raise is not about quality of
> explanation, but about the framework that thinks in terms of "explanation of
> everything real". Instead, I am trying to replace it with "everything real
> is metaphor/language/words" but not in a neo-Kantian sense (as Arlo, for
> example, holds) that everything we know gets filtered through human language
> and metaphor. Instead, I am saying that human language is a special case of
> the language we call "everything real". In short, reality is fundamentally
> semiotic, not just when dealt with by humans.
>
> - Scott
>
> On 5/28/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@localnet.com> wrote:
> > Ian,
> >
> > Ian said:
> > If I'm going to happy spending my life as a poor deluded modernist,
> > you're really going have to explain "modernist" in simple terms ....
> > but I think we're closer than might appear.
> >
> > Scott:
> > By "modernism" I mean roughly SOM, but add to it nominalism, which I see
> as
> > mutually dependent on SOM. A modernist, then, is one who extends the naive
> > view that there is a reality that is simply "there", and thinking and
> > language came into existence (either through Darwinist means, or as
> > installed in a body by God) in order to think about and talk about what
> > exists independently of thinking and language. Now with QM, this edifice
> has
> > been shaken, as you know, but in various ways I see you and Pirsig and
> most
> > everybody as trying to get over SOM but without addressing its mutual
> > dependence on nominalism, and so failing.
> >
> > Ian said:
> > I may think "intellect" has arisen (evolved in my case) from a world
> > without it, but I didn't mention consciousness. As I've said many
> > times, I do in fact believe, there is something physical behind
> > conciousness, that is not yet understood.
> >
> > Scott:
> > As I see it, the word "physical" should be restricted to that which our
> > senses convey to us, namely the spatiotemporal inorganic world. Otherwise,
> > one will simply call "physical" whatever our theories might come up with,
> > and the word loses a useful distinction. So in this sense, QM is not a
> > theory of the physical except that from it one can make predictions that
> one
> > can measure in the phsyical terms of space, time, and mass. But is
> > superposition a physical property?
> >
> > But in what you say there is also an example of what I said above ("in
> > various ways I see you and Pirsig and most everybody as trying to get over
> > SOM but without addressing its mutual dependence on nominalism"), and that
> > is that you seek for something that is to be understood. The mystery,
> > though, is understanding itself.
> >
> > Ian said:
> > Your (1) - yes, with you on these triplets.
> > Your (2) - I did just say in a parallel thread - the 4D-Spacetime of
> > "pop-science" is clearly only a convenient metaphor, but not much like
> > reality it turns out.
> > Your (3) - the "modern" language is losing me ... but you end up with
> > what is now mystical is the normal of the future. I agree. Mystical =
> > Unexplained.
> >
> > Scott:
> > If you agree with (1), then, unless you espouse dualism, I would think you
> > have to agree with me that Quality, Consciousness, and Intellect are all
> at
> > the ultimate metaphysical level ("the same (non)-thing"), and so the MOQ
> is
> > wrong to place intellect as the fourth level of SQ.
> > On (2), if time is not fundamental, and you agree with (1), then there is
> no
> > reason to be a Darwinist, no?
> > On (3), see above. Which implies that I do *not* agree that Mystical =
> > Unexplained. Explanation is another modernist way of thinking, an
> avoidance
> > of recognizing that the real problem is explanation itself.
> >
> > Ian said:
> > The "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" I prefer to think of the
> > word aesthetic here as simply to draw attention away from objective /
> > empirical aspects of experience - obviously aesthetics as we would
> > know it, has arisen from human behaviour post-experience, but I don't
> > believe that's what Northrop was talking about.
> >
> > Scott:
> > Well, my main point is arguing against the privileging of the
> > undifferentiated over the differentiated (again, a nominalist way of
> > thinking, that there is this pure non-linguistic, undifferentiated world
> > that language and thinking make distinctions *about*). Instead, the
> > undifferentiated and the differentiated are in contradictory identity,
> > resulting in/from quality/consciousness/intellect. That is, using the
> > picture from the companion thread, the undifferentiated and the
> > differentiated are the two more comprehensible -- but wrong if treated in
> > isolation -- axes leading away from the contradictory identity center.
> >
> > Ian said:
> > What I can or cannot say about form and formlessness - I've seen that
> > tetralemma before, naturally. The problem is you get back to
> > fundamental liguistic problems, and I can hardly say anything. I did
> > in fact say "aspects of form and formlessness" not that it existed as
> > both, but we're getting into lingusitic knots.
> >
> > Scott:
> > In discussing the Trinity, the Catholic magisterium warns against two
> > heresies: tritheism and modalism. Modalism is the temptation to say that
> the
> > Father, Son and Spirit are three aspects of one God. So, regardless of the
> > truth of the Trinity, I find it useful to borrow that logic, and the fact
> > that we get into linguistic knots is the whole point. One only avoids the
> > knots by moving into error, which is the substitution of something
> > understandable for that which cannot be understood. The error one gets
> with
> > modalism is thinking that 'form' and 'formlessness' are just words, so
> again
> > it is nominalism rearing its ugly head. Instead, one should regard them as
> > real forces that produce/are produced by consciousness/quality/intellect.
> > The function of the LCI is to keep one in that undecidable thought-space.
> > (By the way, the fourth horn of the tetralemma ("one cannot say neither X
> > nor not-X") says that one cannot stop asking the question, which is why
> > Rortyan pragmatism is also not the answer.)
> >
> > - Scott
> >
> >
> >
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