From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Sep 13 2005 - 15:33:24 BST
Gav, snipped and inserted ...
On 9/13/05, gav <gav_gc@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> hey ian,
>
> i agree that experience/consciousness precedes (is
> ontologically prior to) any-thing; including
> ontologies.
[IG] So we're doubly agreed.
>
> the purpose of the koan is to 'push' you into a
> different view of reality.
[IG] I say, to push you into "seeing that there is" a different [view
of] reality, (without necessarily presenting that alternative reality
in any intepretable way - see later for what else it might provide).
> this is why i say 'getting
> it' because it is an "ah-hah" thing; like getting a
> joke. it is not concerned with particulars really.
[IG] I agree, and really believe I've had that "ah-hah" getting it
several times :-) (I keep banging on about Hofstadter - he has a very
similar biography to Pirsig early on - I've blogged before about his
post-ah-hah statements summarising what Zen / Koans bring to an
otherwise classical rational "scientific" view of the world.)
> you personally experienced the telling - the
> narrative.
[IG] Agreed - it's actually what I said. (The poetic value of the
telling may provide immediate experience, but the content of the
telling is however entirely interpreted by your head. Any relationship
between that representation and your own experience of the content
"subject matter" is several times removed.)
> if a joke about a horse that walked into a
> bar is told and there is no-one there to laugh does it
> make a difference anyway?
[IG] Does it make a difference ? Isn't this the same koan as the tree
falling unheard in the forest. ("Making a difference" is the key to
"significance" and the key to fundamental information theory, I
digress, but only marginally - another time perhaps.)
> if you come unstuck the reality of that immediate
> experience will be hard to ignore.
[IG] Yes, but are you recommending this as the highest quality world
model by which to lead life ? Ignore it UNTIL immediately experienced.
No predictive modelling based on prior consciousness ? If you say yes,
I won't believe you, and I'll point you at the "why not jump off the
Eiffel Tower" induction thought experiment.)
>
> i guess it is a model but it is a model that is
> purposely skewif, awry, not quite right....when you
> understand the koan you realise that.
[IG] You bet. (I said it was a model for its own purpose only -
precisely to help you "get it" - it does that by the very fact of
being "skewif" relative to any prior "rationality".)
>
> i disagree about the utility of the 'koan solution'
> model.
[IG] In which case I agree with you again - the koan "solution" has no
utility - there may not even be any recognisable solution per se. The
utility is in the koan thinking process whose outcome is the "ah-hah"
moment (or many repeated moments - just to drive it home, deeper in
your head.)
> the worldview it is trying to help you get to
> is not limited at all in range of application: it is
> the whole thing: it applies to everything. it has to:
> it's a metaphysics. and it's a big shift from being
> the centre of the universe to being imaginary, in
> anyone's book.
[IG] I agree, the specifics of any given koan are not significant to
the general "ah-hah". Not sure I get your last sentence. The "big
shift" for me is to being "in" the world - Tat Tvam Asi, no ?
(Aside - I'm still talking about "real" life - imaginary doesn't come
into it - real dreams, real imagination, real progress. That's what
philosophy is for, no ?)
> I [...] take it further and
> say that the koan can also disclose a model that is in
> accord with the ontological priority of immediate
> experience.
[IG] - I think this is where I have to invoke levels and meta-models.
It provides a new (non-classically-rational) framework for that
ontology [A model for a model - in that sense I'm still agreeing with
you] - some priorities, some basic topology maybe - certainly the
"order of things" experientially, but doesn't really give you any
content for any pragmatic ontology - You still need a few things like
physics and evolution to build the content. (It would take too many
millions of years for one human individual to get that far by
immediate experience alone - too many snags for real life.)
> am i adding anything of value here?
[IG] I think so.
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