From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Wed Jul 20 2005 - 07:02:46 BST
Hi Paul,
> Paul: Yes, but a human *is* inorganic, biological, social and
> intellectual
> patterns. Thus it is correct to say that the intellectual patterns
> respond.
>
>>Equations don't solve themselves, human beings (or computers) do
>>the solving.
>
> Paul: Yes, but, again, a human being *is* the intellectual patterns.
What I am trying to do is distinguish between the patterns which represent
the human being (or, perhaps better, the discriminating intellect) from the
patterns which represent,eg, an equation. I'm not denying that the human
being - the interesting thing about the human being - can be described as
intellectual patterns, I just think there is an important division between
the one set and the other, and the division is that the human intellectual
patterns are able to respond to Quality, whereas the equation patterns
can't.
>>When you say that 'generalised propositional truths' do some organising, I
>>am wondering: how? In what way can a proposition organise anything? Are
>>the
>>sentences in the books on my shelves secretly plotting together for that
>>glorious day when the tyranny of human beings is overcome and the
>>propositions can leap free from their imprisonment on the printed page?
>
> Paul: Uh, yeah, that's what I mean....
>
> Please.
That image was intended to raise a smile, not a sigh... ;-)
>>In your explanation so far, it's precisely that self-reweaving web which I
>>can't see a place for. Hence my question.
>
> Paul: Hang on, I used that quote to answer your question then you repeat
> it
> back to me and tell me my answer has no place for it!
OK, I'll go through the next bit slowly to see if I can tease out what my
concern is (where I see the gap)
> The self-reweaving web which responds to Quality *is* the intellectual
> patterns of value.
I would rather say the self-reweaving web (SRW) is made of intellectual
patterns of value, but yes.
> Humans *are*, along with the other patterns,
> intellectual patterns of value, they don't *have* them.
I'd rather say that a mind is an intellectual pattern of value, and keep
'human' for the whole agglomeration of inorganic, biological etc. In which
case it makes sense to speak of a human having intellectual patterns, but of
the human mind being intellectual patterns. Happy with that?
> Generalised
> propositional truths are intellectual patterns.
OK.
> Generalised propositional
> truths are in the web of belief, so I can't see what the issue is.
So, generalised propositional truths (GPT) form part of the SRW. I'm happy
with that.
> All I'm
> adding is that there are some intellectual patterns in this web of belief
> which justify a significant amount of other intellectual patterns.
I quibble with the 'justify' but that's a bit beside the point here (I see
the logic going from the detail to the abstract, you seem to see it the
other way round. Plato/Aristotle?).
Are you saying that the mind IS a GPT?
I would say the mind (a collection of intellectual patterns) is able to
contain GPT, and manipulate GPT, but is not itself adequately described as
GPT.
And, most importantly, I don't think that GPT has the capacity to respond to
Quality independently of other aspects of the human mind which don't qualify
as GPT. Hence I question whether GPT can organise anything.
> From
> Aristotelian logic, the tetralemma, the number system, algebra,
> geometrical
> axioms through to evolution, cosmology, "nothing can travel faster than
> the
> speed of light," and "everything is value," there are propositional truths
> which hold webs together, decide what is part of the web and what isn't -
> they organise knowledge. They are the roots from which branches grow.
> They
> are the definitive beliefs of paradigms. When they go, much of the web
> goes
> with it.
I would describe them as the ropes which lash together a cargo. I'm
interested in what is valuing the cargo, and therefore making use of the
rope.
A different image: my kids play with lego. The lego can be organised by
colour, shape, size etc. Colour, shape and size are GPT, but the GPT are
applied to the lego, the lego doesn't self-assemble (which would it
choose?). The GPT (of colour, shape or size) is valued at a particular point
in time by the patterns in the mind of the child, but that which is doing
the valuing (and therefore guiding the sorting and the application of the
GPT into colour OR shape OR size) is not itself a GPT.
It's as if the GPTs are algorithms which are used to sort and render more
efficient processes in the mind (in the same way that an algorithm can
compress a digital picture into a JPG format). But I don't think that a) the
mind is completely reducible to algorithms in this way, and b) the most
interesting things about the mind, from my point of view, are the ones which
don't naturally fall under the description of GPT. Virtues, for example, or
decision making. (Of course, it's precisely the decision making which I
think GPT is incapable of).
> Paul: Okay, well maybe she learns the general propositional truths later
> but the beliefs she learns first may still be organised around those
> general
> truths regardless.
Hmmm. I think there is a really large disagreement between us here, one of
those disagreements that is so large it underlies just about everything
else. Interesting. I think it's that Plato/Aristotle thing again. Is a GPT
the same as a Platonic form?
Are you saying that the GPT (an intellectual pattern) organises social level
patterns (some beliefs are social level patterns, would you agree) - even
before the intellectual level has come into being?
>>"I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its
>>correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness.
>>No:
>>it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true
>>and
>>false" (§94)
>
> Paul: Yes, I agree, but the inherited background *is* the social and
> intellectual patterns (the web of belief) which one learns through the
> usual
> cultural processes and the general propositional truths are an integral
> part
> of that intellectual web.
Agree with that.
Thanks for taking your time on this.
Sam
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