[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[ian glendinning]

Dan you also said ...
"This changing reality we mold is arising in dependence on causes and
conditions. There is no object apart from that."

Hear hear. All I'd add is "except by convention" ... to join it to
your earlier point.

(Buddhist "arising" is very close to scientific "emergence" to tie up
a couple of further threads.)

Ian
PS Dan, have you followed Paul Turner's recent stuff on causation and
"dependent arising" ?


On 8/1/06, Dan Glover <daneglover at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone
>
> >From: "Case" <Case at iSpots.com>
> >Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> >To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> >Subject: Re: [MD] Platt's Individual Level
> >Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:18:55 -0400
> >
> >[Dan]
> >Let's examine this carefully. When something happens, it is memory you
> >count
> >
> >on. The intellectualization of the happening creates the happening, so to
> >speak. The present is impermanent, always shifting, ever Dynamic. Memory
> >solidifies the happening into fact. No probability involved there. Still, I
> >do get your drift. To take the past and impose it on the unknown future
> >does
> >
> >seem to involve probability. But isn't that just more intellectualization
> >after the fact? I should think it is.
> >
> >[Case]
> >When something happens I count on my memory or on the testimony of others
> >but memory shifts and is altered by incoming data. Our projections of the
> >past are as probabilistic as our models of the future. It is ironic that
> >the
> >only certainty that can ever exist is NOW and it is forever off limits to
> >us. That is illusion enough for me and it is based on physics. I guess I am
> >wondering how much more illusory metaphysics can make things.
>
> Metaphysics is a way of ordering reality. The illusion is that there is a
> reality to be ordered.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >For instance, if my actions are this, then the results of my actions are
> >that. Let me ask you: how do you see karmic relationships affecting
> >probability?
> >
> >[Case]
> >I am not sure I understand the question. Is Karma causal or just the way
> >things seem to work out? Like the bell shaped curve it just shows up all
> >over the place? A classic distribution of probability rather than a factor
> >in what gets distributed.
>
> The Buddha taught that since all phenomena arise in dependence on causes and
> conditions they are relative. We know from experience that people and things
> cause pain and pleasure. This relationship with people and things can be
> thought of as karmic relationships, or evolutionary garbage, as Robert
> Pirsig puts it.
>
> Probability as I understand it has to do with measuring the past in order to
> predict the future. My question is: how is probability affected by
> dependence on causes and conditions? Is this just a given?
>
> >
> >
> > >[Case]
> > >If you are saying that Quality is uncertainty then I agree.
> >
> >[Dan]
> >I don't believe that's what I am saying though it might be interpreted in
> >that way, I suppose. I believe you mean Dynamic Quality is uncertainty but
> >I
> >
> >think the MOQ would say that is incorrect. Dynamic Quality is 'betterness'
> >and there is nothing uncertain about that, imo.
> >
> >[Dan]
> >I thing Pirsig's got the idea right but messed up with his terminology. His
> >use of DQ seems more like Harmony to me. It is when things are balance and
> >"right" This is more of his original use of Quality in ZMM. DQ seems to me
> >to be that aspect of Quality that it unpredictable and wild. It can be a
> >lotto winner or a safe falling from the 10th floor. Not better or worse
> >just
> >constantly different.
>
> This seems ok. I think though that the sense of 'betterness' one feels is
> what guides all great acheivements.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >I feel materialism is a high quality idea and the brain in the vat theory
> >is
> >
> >a low quality idea. Even if we were to consider everything an idea it
> >doesn't necessarily follow that all ideas are equal. Otherwise there would
> >be no path towards getting better.
> >
> >[Case]
> >I agree but separating the wheat from the chaff is uncertain business don't
> >you think?
>
> To educate oneself removes uncertainty, imo.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >Maya has many different connotations. However, I think it a mistake to
> >believe maya is all appearance and no substance.
> >
> >The illusion is that there is something of permanence, anything of
> >permanence.
> >
> >[Case]
> >So it is not so much that there are not "thing in themselves" which exist
> >independent of perceiving organisms, it is that whatever they are they are
> >changing too?
>
> Phenomena exist in dependence on causes and conditions. Period.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >I think the MOQ would say that chaos isn't the source of anything.
> >
> >[Case]
> >How do you think of chaos?
>
> Dictionary definitions always seem to work best.
>
> >
> > >[Case]
> > >What I perceive is an illusion.
> >
> >[Dan]
> >And the perceiving? What of that?
> >
> >[Case]
> >Isn't perception in some sense how illusions are created?
>
> Perhaps perception is the illusion, yes.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >That is of course assuming you believe you are apart and separate from
> >"whatever is actually out there."
> >
> >[Case]
> >I may be absorbing what is out there and incorporating it into my illusion
> >but I get a strong sense that there is much more out there and it is apart
> >from me.
>
> When you get that sense it IS part of you.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >External reality is what you make it. I read in another thread about how a
> >person can have faith that the sun rises every morning. All one has to do
> >to
> >
> >stop the sun from rising is to realize the sun doesn't rise at all. It is
> >an
> >
> >illusion that we take for granted. I haven't seen a sunrise or sunset in
> >years.
> >
> >[Case]
> >I am not following you on this one.
>
> Change your thinking and you change your behavior. I think of what you might
> call sunrise and sunset as the turning of the day. A time to quiet my mind,
> to still the tulmult of life, to drop out for a bit. I know the sun doesn't
> rise or set. I know it is an illusion. I know the earth is turning creating
> the illusion of sunrise and sunset. I thought this might be a useful
> analogy.
>
> >
> > >[Case]
> > >Thankfully the correspondence between illusion and reality tolerates a
> >lot
> >of slack.
> >
> >[Dan]
> >Please tell me how you know that.
> >
> >[Case]
> >People can believe that dolls are babies or become so detached as to let
> >cigarette burn their fingers and yet others will pick up the slack for
> >them.
>
> Thank you for explaining. I think this is very scary. I think that's why I
> prefer to be alone.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >I think Phaedrus of ZMM discovered just the opposite. The more insight a
> >person gains into something the more questions arise. So the less certain
> >it
> >
> >is.
> >
> >[Case]
> >This is Bohr's point, that the complementary of clarity is precision. The
> >more you look at detail the more details you will find. Isn't that what a
> >Gestalt shift involves: taking all those details and integrating them into
> >some new whole? Clarity eventually shifting into phase as a result of
> >precision.
>
> Bohr coined the term 'complementarity' (not related to complementary, sorry)
> to illustrate how when a measurement is taken one can focus on the speed of
> the wave/particle or the position of the particle/wave but never both at
> once. Bohr wrote:
>
> "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description.
> It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is.
> Physics concerns what we can say about nature."
>
> I recommend Henry Folse's book on the philosophy of Neils Bohr as a great
> starting point towards understanding what Bohr was on about.
>
> >
> >[Dan]
> >I think one could say we are perceivers of reality. Our senses bring us the
> >world. We may extend our senses to perceive more than we might otherwise
> >but
> >there is no reality beyond the illusion we hold, imo.
> >
> >[Case]
> >This suggests to me at least there is some object of perception: this
> >changing reality that we mold into a changing illusion.
>
> This changing reality we mold is arising in dependence on causes and
> conditions. There is no object apart from that.
>
> >
> >Case
> >
> >"No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts
> >to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man
> >claims
> >he knows, he cannot really comprehend it."
> >Ecclesiastes
>
> Indeed!
>
> Thank you for your comments,
>
> Dan
>
>
> "It is thus: Proceed, proceed, proceed beyond, thoroughly proceed beyond, be
> founded in enlightenment."
>
>
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