From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Nov 21 2005 - 11:24:44 GMT
Case,
I buy quite a lot of this, or something very like it. It's where I've
been coming from for 4 or 5 years, with "quantum information" itself
being the most fundamental level of a physicalism or naturalism-like
metaphysics.
Certainty / uncertainty, causality / non-locality, chaos / coherence,
patterns / levels, interaction / significance - all quantum concepts
fit well with both information and quality - static / dynamic. It's
why I made the original connection between Talbot / Capra / Josephson
/ Stapp and Pirsig et al.
(The difficulty with metaphors at this fundamental level of physics is
relating visualisation of the metaphor with common sense reality,
between quantum scale uncertainty, and terrestrial chaos & causality.
It's the intangibility of the interactions that we know here as
quality that is all too easy to pin down with some tangible metaphor,
and in doing so to kill the beast. Better to keep the intangible
possibilities open, than collapse the wave function in to tangible
"objects" - etc - but caveat metaphor.)
BTW - There are alternative schools of physical thought (eg anthropic
entropic principle) that say Einstein was right and Heisenberg's
uncertainty is an erroneous explanation for cosmological evidence -
but I'm still on the side of "accepted" quantum physics at the moment.
Anyway, add non-locality to your uncertainty and I think we have quality.
Ian
On 11/18/05, Case <Case@ispots.com> wrote:
> While we are on the subject of configuration of the MoQ: I would like to
> propose yet another. This is actually an outgrowth of the MoQ I posed
> earlier. I have been working with the version I presented earlier for about
> 15 years now and am very happy with it, thank you. But I think the way I
> usually express it does not capture its full vitality. So here is another
> way to spin it minus all the negative reaction to the received view of the
> MoQ.
>
> First comes Quality. Quality remains undefined. It is in principle
> unknowable. If it is really "the way things are" then it is undefined
> because:
>
> 1. We are equipped through our sense to apprehend only a faction of it.
> 2. Because of the uncertainty principle there is always something unknowable
> built into whatever it is.
>
> Quality is described if not defined in Pirsig's work. His areas of concern
> influence the aspects of it that he describes and how he spins them. I have
> complained in the past that this has led to neglect of other aspects of
> Quality. Particularly the lack of emphasis on harmony that is central to
> Taoism. But here I want to focus on this notion of the undefined quality of
> Quality. Be saying that Quality is undefined we are saying that there is an
> element of uncertainty at the core of the MoQ.
>
> We can't know it for sure not matter how hard we try and all definitions
> have to begin with: "It's kinda like..." So another way of spinning Quality
> is to say, "It is kinda like the biggest probability field ever." That is
> Quality is the set of everything that is possible.
>
> If Quality is regarded as infinite possibility then it condenses into
> probabilities. That is things that are likely to happen and things that
> aren't. Since there is a probability, however unlikely, that anything can
> happen; the present is where everything resolves into probabilities of 100%.
> (Note here: the present is the only place where all probabilities are 100%.
> The future and the past are both subject to varying degree of probability.)
> We exist in a kind of temporal probability bubble with uncertain ahead and
> behind us. Much more can be said about this but moving along...
>
> When regarded in this way and strictly from the perspective of bipedal ape
> descendants, the ability to approximate probability is of enormous
> evolutionary advantage. One of the stated goals of science is to enhance our
> ability to predict and control nature or: to understand and manipulate
> probability. I have mentioned a couple of times previously that having a
> temporal buffer aids us in this by helping us transcend that immediacy of
> the present. It allows us to apprehend the dimension of time in the same way
> the stereoscopic vision allows us to convert two dimensions into three.
>
> I think I am jumping ahead a bit and skipping some steps but I never
> underestimate my capacity to bore the reader so: from the standpoint of the
> MoQ. Static quality relates to Quality as manifest in things or ideas whose
> probabilities are well known or can be estimated with a high degree of
> accuracy. Concepts such as chairness make sense because there is a high
> probability that English speakers will be able agree on what constitutes a
> chair. This probability of agreement increases with each new encounter with
> objects that have chairlike Qualities.
>
> Dynamic Quality then relates to objects and events whose probabilities are
> not well know or to things that can change known or previously estimated
> probabilities. This arises from the nature of Quality or possibility. Take
> the chair which is highly static and add a hurricane. The structure and
> action of the hurricane is fairly static in some sense but its path is
> Dynamic as are Qualities it introduces into the objects in its path, say a
> chair. If the chair is sitting in a room and the weather condition are held
> within certain limits the chair's future is pretty static. But if a
> hurricane rolls though it creates a very Dynamic environment in which the
> future location and configuration of the chair are less predictable.
>
> From the standpoint of the MoQ much can be constructed from this. Anal
> sizing the four levels (which I continue to regard as a set of static
> latches inhibiting the advancement of the MoQ) in this manner should prove
> fruitful. However, one of the source of unfruitfulness is the desire on the
> part of many here to jump straight into the 4th level with insufficient
> attention to the others. I am on record as stating that the four levels in
> no way discrete as Pirsig contends. But lets start with the first level for
> a change.
>
> We exist in a place and time where conditions are such that there is a great
> diversity in the number of possible physical interactions. We live in Baby
> Bear's bed were it is not too hard and not too soft. It is just right. It is
> just right in the sense that physical systems are in the right balance and
> the distribution of various elements is in the right proportion. But it is
> also just right because they have been this way for a very very long time.
> This make the environment of Planet Earth dynamic in its constitution but
> static with respect to time.
>
> Ok, I am outta time myself at the moment and I guess before going on with
> this I would like a little reality check. The main point I am getting at is
> that uncertainty and probability should be more fully appreciated and
> explored within the MoQ. I am not really settled for example on whether DQ
> is all about the change in probabilities or the number of possible
> interactions of probability. Carbon is highly dynamic because of the number
> of possible interactions it can have with other elements. Hurricanes are
> dynamic because they alter existing probabilities...
>
> Is anyone buying this?
>
> Case
>
>
>
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