Magnus Berg (qmgb@bull.se)
Sat, 18 Oct 1997 06:04:03 +0100
Hi Platt
> Yes. So here we have a situation where your argument defeats itself. Of
> course, our discussion occurs in the rational SOM mode which, as Doug
> points out, leaves something to be desired. (I think Doug's email about
> "many truths" is extremely significant.)
Indeed, but I also think that the MoQ says something about these
contexts. It orderes them according to their morality, and I think
there's a very good reason to do this. Any level (context) are not
aware of the levels above, so it cannot judge it. So, I don't think
even the MoQ should be used to resolve self-contradictory assertions
such as the one discussed earlier. Both assertions recognize the other
and can therefore not be placed in different levels. If you place them
in different contexts, however, those contexts will have nothing to do
with the levels of the MoQ.
> There are several SOM paradoxes in
> the MOQ itself. For example, the quality of the rational Metaphysics of
> Quality cannot be proved by rational thought. Still, so long as admit to
> being in a rational SOM mode, self-contradictory assertions need to be
> challenged. When we want to go beyond the SOM mode, we can drop in a
> poem
> like Maggie's "Lord of the Dance." (Platt's test for AI is to have one
> computer make sense of a poem written by another computer.)
Then who decides it *is* a poem in the first place? And who decides
that the sense made of it is ok?
> > I just don't think it's fair to take written words too literally.
> > First of all, the intellectual pattern becomes static as soon as
> > it's printed as words. And second, language is limited and
> > ambigous.
>
> OK. So why are we hung up on defining the levels? Even the best
> definition will be limited and ambiguous.
Because we in the "metaphysics" context of the MoQ wants to use it
to model physics. And yes, they will probably always be incomplete
and ambigous but as I've said before, I don't want to be suprised
every time something falls to the ground. I want to be able to
predict predictable phenomena. We do this every day and call it
common sense, so you can't just close your eyes and pretend you
don't do it. I don't think it's a big difference trying to express
this common sense in writing.
> > I'd place the core of our disagreement here. We've approached the MoQ
> from
> > different directions. But that's ok, that's what it's supposed to do.
> Join
> > seemingly different people around the same core.
> >
> > Your approach is homing in on the "inquiry into morals" part, whereas
> mine
> > aims for the "metaphysics" part. And this metaphysics part has very much
> > to do with the composition of man-made objects, as well as non man-made
> > objects.
>
> Excellent point. For me the metaphysical thrust is secondary to the
> morals
> thrust. Thanks for making the distinction clear. It illustrates the
> value
> of Doug's advice to bring our assumptions out into the open. Since our
> assumptions are so near and dear to us we often don't recognize them for
> what they are, and it takes someone else to point them out.
Great! One thing worries me though. I really hope that in stating which
context a post belongs to, everyone will still read that post and not
deem it irrelevant because it belongs to the "wrong" context. We have so
much to give eachother and this inter-context exchange is maybe the most
important part of what the Lila Squad is about.
Magnus
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:05 CEST