From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Thu Jul 28 2005 - 17:43:05 BST
Paul & Mati and interested parties
(Sorry for the delay, a week around here is total oblivion)
On 23 July Paul Turner wrote to Mati who had written:
> >Humans knew about time space long ago as it became part of the social
> >level as it evolved. It marked the seasons, or a life time etc...
> >Time and space as scientific abstract ideas have further established
> >with advanced scientific methods. Today with the advancement of such
> >methods we can speculate on patterns of time and space that seems to
> >defy the real world as we know it. (i.e. timemachines)
> Paul: I don't disagree with this. I agreed with Scott recently when
> he said that space and time were evident in social patterns.
Even if Mati supports my SOL regarding intellect I have doubt
about "his" space and time. IMO it's not quite right to speak of
lower level patterns at the upper levels. The much referred to
carbon is inorganic and even if it follows Q-evolution into the
biological level it does not become a biological pattern.
Space and time are clearly inorganic, those patterns are not only
visible tangible matter, but also energy, forces, fields ...whatever.
In a remark to Reinier I too suggested an intellectual parallel of
space and time, but wonder if this is useful. If so there are
intellectual counterpart to all there is, and even if this may be
Paul's intellect it clearly isn't SOL's.
IMO intellect is the VALUE of (among other things) this distinction
between an objective time and a subjective abstraction of it while
Paul is saying that intellect is the abstraction itself. However late
sayings by Paul "shocks" me by being very close to mine, for
instance re. Sam's on emotions and the "thinking" intellect. If this
develops we may reach a consensus.
> >I will regress briefly to suggest the social and intellectual values
> >are born to our abilities as humans to reflect values. An example of
> >social values of time and space might be identification of
> >constellations and their placement. This process of consciousness
> >that made this possible was pretty sophisticated for its day, but it
> >did not represent an intellectual value. The reason being is the
> >"value" of identify constellation was still based on and reflected
> >the social mythos of the day.
I don't disagree with any of this, just a bit unfamiliar with Mati's
reflection metaphor.
> >If the Greeks such as Plato and
> >Aristotle can be credited for SOM in that time period then something
> >interested can be speculated. With the advent of SOM we have birth
> >of scientific method (based on the objective approached) that allows
> >us to push the understanding of such values as time and space to a
> >new level. But regardless of how far that knowledge goes it is
> >tethered to have meaning to us (the subject) to have any value.
Agree up to the last about us as subjects (in the SOM sense). OK
this emerged with the intellectual level, but we are supposed to
have transcended intellect (at least the SOL intellect) and from
the MOQ we aren't subjects, but an amalgam of all levels.
> >I
> >can't think if any scientific advancement that didn't have to answer
> >the question, "So what is in it for us as humankind." To find an
> >answer requires an intellectual reflection based mostly on reason.
OK, at the intellectual level both "scientific advancement" and
"what's in it for us" certainly became issues. This follows into the
MOQ as the highest static value, yet metaphysically ......
> >Failure to provide a reasonable response is a failure in the value of
> >such a science.
> Paul: Agreed, but, as I understand it, Bo's SOL idea is not about
> intellect being defined by humans asking "What's in it for us?" I
> think he is saying it's the opposite i.e. humans trying to discover an
> objective reality - as it is *independent of* the supposed
> subjectivity of humans.
I had to study this a while to get Paul's version of the SOL. "It's
the opposite" means "Intellect is humans trying to discover an
objective reality - as it is - independent of the supposed
subjectivity of humans".
Well, it's not all wrong, but ambiguous as if half intellect's own
definition of itself and half MOQ's definition of the intellectual
level. Only the latter counts and that is: It is the value of the
OBJECTIVE REALITY/SUBJECTIVITY OF HUMANS distinction.
> If anybody was asking "What's in it for us?"
> I would think it was the Sophists. "Man is the measure of all things"
> was something Plato was railing against, wasn't it?
Agree, but the Sophists were intellectuals too, in the "subjectivity
over objectivity" sense. And now I have high hopes of Paul
(whose rendition of the SOL only reflected the "objective over
subjective" half) will understand the SOL.
Bo
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