From: Laycock, Jos (OSPT) (Jos.Laycock@OFFSOL.GSI.GOV.UK)
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 13:46:14 BST
Alright Dav
I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree. It was a strange move by
"drunk me" to respond in that way on Friday, I think your rhetorical style
must have confused me slightly.
All better now, and less convinced than ever by Scott's rebuttal.
Jos
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of David Zentgraf
Sent: 03 September 2005 03:42
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness/MOQ, definition of
Hi Scott,
I am still trying to digest your point of view, but so far I'm not
yet convinced that my understanding is foolish.
From what I understand you are strictly separating all kinds of
biological processes putting them into different categories, which
makes them look like they'd have nothing to do with each other. Here
I think is were my understanding of reality differs from yours. I see
everything as one big mass (or mess) which is constantly changing and
moving. Through scientific research humans over time cut through this
mess in a top-to-bottom approach and put different labels on things
at different levels. So staying at a certain level makes it all look
separated. If you're cutting deeper though, it all starts to look
like one and the same thing (atoms, quarks, strings (?)), just taking
on different shapes at different complexity levels (patterns based on
patterns).
So yes, you certainly are right when saying all activities are
separated by space and (to a certain extend) time, but I don't see
how this would prevent any kind of interaction which might, if
sufficiently complex, lead to a development of consciousness.
> Science can only study the biological
> activity that accompany perception, somewhat like studying what a
> television
> does. It cannot explain perception itself, what actually gets shown on
> television.
That's simply a point of view, or again, the question at which
(complexity) level you look at things, where you label them, where
your mind summarises them. If you look at the internal workings of
the TV, you will indeed just see how it works, but you don't see what
it produces. If you take a step back and see the whole apparatus in
action, you will see what it shows on the screen.
As Pirsig said himself in ZMM, it's the difference between the
classical mind and the romantic mind. Both are right, but both look
at it from different perspectives. Which again supports my theory
that consciousness is nothing beyond this physical/biological world,
but just a part of it, and we just need to find the right complexity
level at which it occurs.
> [...] space and time are created in the acts of perception.
Absolutely. We've got no evidence that space actually exists except
for the evidence that we perceive, which is limited by the workings
of our brains and senses. So we're just building that mental image,
our a priori world, which might or might not be correct and we'll
probably never know. And as far as I'm concerned time is, at least in
it's usual understanding, entirely a human invention, another way to
label change or movement.
> Science (with the partial exception of quantum mechanics) is the
> study of
> that consciousness-produced spatio-temporal form, the products of
> perception, and not of a reality in which or by which perception
> can be
> explained.
As I said, I think science is getting there (and you are saying so
yourself by making an exception for quantum mechanics). I called it a
top-to-bottom approach earlier. People started thinking about what
they could perceive with their senses and drew their immediate real-
world conclusions from it (Hey, the first "scientists" invented the
wheel and discovered fire. How exiting is that by today's standards?)
As more and more evidence was collected over the years, scientific
thinking shifted from the top level to the underlying levels. The ol'
Greeks where probably the ones that hit the consciousness level, and
from there "upwards" they're theories may be perfectly valid. But
scientists have been digging deeper and deeper, and are now at or
near a level where the workings of consciousness itself could be
explained.
Which, to come back to the MOQ, is what I wanted to know in the first
place: At which level does the MOQ start and what is it actually
explaining? I say it's close to the Greek level, slightly below it.
But it's not the lowest yet.
Jos said:
> This is what intellect says, I strive here for supra-intellectual
> understanding.
[...]
> Just because things don't fit within intellectual
> understanding doesn't mean we cant try to grasp them. I am more than
> intellect. - committed atheist and MoQer
[...]
> No. We lack discovery not ability.
> Pirsig asserts that the intellectual level only came into existence
> with
> Greek philosophy, who is to say we cant find more higher ones?
Thank you. You're just supporting my points. The only difference is
that I am looking for "lower levels", not higher ones. But that's
just another abstraction and approach to labelling anyway.
> I should make it clear that the below is my "MOQ opinion", in
> reality (sorry
> folks) I worry that what you say below may be absolutely true. Its
> ("we"
> are) all just a big infernal machine that pumps out responses in
> response to
> stimuli, we store records of some stimuli and feed them back in to
> moderate
> our responses but basically "we" just watch it all unfold.
> Sad really, I might rob a bank tomorrow.
It's not necessarily bad or sad. Yes, you might rob a bank tomorrow,
but without already existing patterns that drive you in this
direction it's rather unlikely.
On the contrary: If you apply this "helplessness" to your day to day
life, you see that there's no point in living anyway, no ultimate
goal, no ultimate bad or good, no fate that's specifically working
for or against you. So you might as well make the best you can out of
it. (Yes, I am currently reading HH Dalai Lama's The Art of
Happiness... ;o))
Chrs,
Dav
On 2005/09/03, at 3:06, Scott Roberts wrote:
> Dav, Ian, Jos,
>
> You all have been discussing how one might find out the workings of
> consciousness under the assumption (Ian partially excepted) that it
> is an
> outgrowth of biology when biological systems reach a certain level of
> complexity. Here is why I think this pursuit is foolishness.
>
> First, assume that all relevant factors are strictly spatio-
> temporal. (If
> one denies this assumption, for example, by bringing in quantum
> non-locality, then all bets are off, since the question is whether
> or not
> consciousness arose in time.)
>
> The contents of perception are macroscopic, yet the spatio-temporal
> processes consist of an immense activity of microscopic events.
> Each such
> event is separated from all others by space and/or time. All
> communication
> from one event to another is just another microscopic event. Given the
> assumption, there can be awareness of nothing bigger than these
> microscopic
> events (and actually not even that, since awareness requires a
> background
> against which the foreground -- the event -- is set off, hence it
> contains
> more information than can be found in an event). Hence, the
> assumption of
> strict spatio-temporality must be wrong. Appeals to complexity theory,
> recursive loops, etc. make no difference, as long as the strict
> spatio-temporality assumption is made. Science can only study the
> biological
> activity that accompany perception, somewhat like studying what a
> television
> does. It cannot explain perception itself, what actually gets shown on
> television.
>
> Another argument: we know that the contents of our sense
> perceptions (trees
> and such) are built out of raw (or at least rawer) sensations (color
> swatches, tones, etc.), which in turn are assumed to be built out
> zillions
> of quantum level events (e.g., electrons absorbing photons). In
> other words,
> what we see, hear, etc., are products of perception -- they don't
> exist as
> macroscopic objects except in the act of perception. Yet in trying to
> explain the processes of perception biologically, we are using those
> products (e.g., glial cells) as existing prior to perception to
> explain
> perception.
>
> Combining the two arguments, there is an alternate hypothesis, that
> space
> and time are created in the acts of perception. This does not
> entail that
> "to be is to be perceived", just that non-perceived reality is not
> spatio-temporal, that perception converts it into spatio-temporal
> form.
> Science (with the partial exception of quantum mechanics) is the
> study of
> that consciousness-produced spatio-temporal form, the products of
> perception, and not of a reality in which or by which perception
> can be
> explained. (For more on this, I recommend Samuel Avery's "The
> Dimensional
> Structure of Consciousness" and of course Owen Barfield's "Saving the
> Appearances")
>
> - Scott
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