[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[David M]

Ham

I use agency without implying being an agent for X.
Equally I could say absolute spirit or actor or force or will. There is
no ideal word. But I would accept that agency goes
beyond human agency, so cosmic X is required. I am not
sure what Scott meant either.

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 01, 2006 2:03 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism


>
> Scott and David --
>
>
> When I asked David what the "stuff " is that we are observing, he replied:
>
>> Stuff is an an idea, a differentiation of
>> experience only made possible once concepts
>> of internal/external, time, space, etc come into being.
>> I doubt you will get this as usual.
>
> He elaborated again on the "stuff" in his more recent message (to Scott):
>
>> Well there is stuff we sense without too much cultural
>> interpretation like colours or wetness or hardness and
>> can point at so we call these material, and there is stuff
>> that requires culture, like linking up a connection between
>> ice, water and steam, or making some paper special and
>> calling it money, so these are ideas, and they are both real,
>> but there are important differences and we need both to
>> have any chance of saying something as basic as that
>> the world exists.
>
> David also said:
>> What I would like to say about anti-essentialism
>> is that it rejects all essentialisms, and therefore
>> ends up with a very simple and obvious ontology,
>> i.e. that it is all contingent, it may all have been
>> different, the universe is a free-form-verse. It may
>> have repeat lines in it for some reason, and there
>> could be no science without this SQ/repeats/order,
>> but bar the repeats it is all DQ, creative, disordered.
>> Or equally it is all a matter of agency, for me agency
>> is what collapses the wave function to reduce the
>> possible to the actual, so that the under-determined
>> (the lack of precedent to repeat) can be actual and
>> not just suspended superpositions.
>
> Scott said:
>> My view is that without something like an essence,
>> there couldn't be concepts or memory, and therefore
>> no thinking. On the other hand, a concept is dependent
>> on its expression, so one can't be an essentialist.
>> In other words, I see anti-essentialism and essentialism
>> as being two ways of falling off the Middle Way.
>
> I find this dialogue interesting.  Both of you reject a primary essence, 
> yet
> David speaks of an "agency" reducing the possible to the actual and Scott
> rejects the essence logically needed for concepts on the ground that "a
> concept is dependent on its expression", whatever that means.  Now an 
> agent
> implies a source or authority on whose behalf the agent acts, while 
> concepts
> and experience (as Scott suggests) couldn't exist without an essence.
>
> In view of these statements and the fact that you both agree that 
> experience
> and concepts exist, I don't understand why you are determined to bend
> conventional logic in order to renounce essentialism.  I would have 
> assumed
> that both of you would see DQ as the essential source, as problematic as 
> the
> dynamics of a progenitive Quality would be.
>
> I know that you both regard my thinking as a throwback to Cartesianism, 
> but
> it seems to me that you can't have either a "you" or "your concept" 
> without
> a prior source.  As a starter, perhaps Scott will be kind enough to 
> explain
> what he means by "a concept is dependent on its expression", and why this
> rules out essence.
>
> Regards,
> Ham
>
>
> moq_discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>