[MD] Kant's Motorcycle

[Case]

Joe, 

Thanks for the thoughtful reply!

I agree with your quote below especially: "... any belief in intelligence or
consciousness belonging to beings greater in scale than man, is in danger of
being regarded as superstition."

I am highly suspicious of superstition. As for the view that there maybe
internal laws of psychology that render man himself predictable I suggest
these are two different things. We could find such laws but they are
unlikely to render man predictable.

[snip straight to Kant]

[Joe]
Kant also used a body/soul split, but claimed the ding an sich was 
unknowable because the mind had its own structure. He avoided abstraction, 
and the world of ideas and opened the door for direct experience. He still 
falls under the S= mind/will, O= body Metaphysics, with his emphasis on the 
categorical imperative.

[Case]
Just to clarify. Kant's says that we know TITs though the structure of our
minds. I think in identifying the a priori's he was attempting to specify
the structure of our minds in much the way the Freud and Jung did later. But
I think the neuropsych crowd is doing a much more thorough job. 

[Joe]
IMO Pirsig's genius was in seeing that Kant was on the right track with 
structure, but that he wasn't ruthless enough in destroying a body/soul 
split. Kant unnecessarily kept a body/soul split. She is only one organism! 
All is experience. She is not divided. The Categorical Imperative becomes 
evolutionary dimensions of existence, morality.

[Case]
Kant continued to talk about souls and stuff because he was a theist and
lived in a land of theists. While I don't hold it against him I don't take
it seriously either. I also do not see how Kant's ethics is related very
well to his metaphysics in the Critique. The whole duty and categorical
imperative are interesting but not satisfying. Pirsig called them ugly. I
can buy that. The other major theory of ethic comes from Bentham and Mill
and is based on the greatest happiness principle. We are motivated by
pleasure and pain. I rather like that one warts and all. 

[Joe]
I go back in history to see how others view existence. Esoteric literature 
describes a law of seven. IMO Existence along with everything else conforms 
to that law. The duality of a body/soul split with real existence and 
intentional existence SOM is incomplete and misleading. I looked back on my 
studies of esoteric literature of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicol, and Collins 
to see how others have viewed existence, and cobble existence and a law of 
seven together.

[Case]
I don't know about this law of seven of which you speak. I am unfamiliar,
intentionally so, with they theosophical crowd. I tend to think they have
earned their obscurity.

[Joe]
IMO There are dimensions in existence, a moral order. It seems that time is 
necessary for evolution to produce an individual in a new order of 
existence. Morality is the necessity that when a new order evolves from the 
old it cannot destroy the old and continue to exist, there are too many 
interconnected parts. Individuals can destroy what they want to, but not 
morally. Destruction of the environment is morally wrong. It is not too 
clever either. Individuals belong to an order, and it is hard to distinguish

which order because they are so complex. One foot here, a hand there, but 
the center of gravity places them in one of the seven orders. If one order 
of existence collapses, all orders above it collapse, and evolution is 
forced to start from the last latch. Time is involved, but...... Three steps

forward, one step backward. DQ is undefined and existing in all orders, a 
must be. MOQ


A question: what does it mean "that you get nothing for nothing, and damn 
little for two cents?" Payment is tied to evolution.

[Case]
If you are talking about a search for the "Laws of Nature", a set of rules
that we can discern that TITs follow I am with you. But evolution is an idea
of such sweeping majesty as to take ones breath away. It applies to species,
planets, and individual behavior. It is a theory about change and how
stability emerges from chaos. The problem I have is with the idea that this
process is directed somehow from outside, rather like David Brin's Uplift
novels. It seems much more plausible to me that consciousness (a term I use
reluctantly) is evolving outward from Earth not being absorbed from the
cosmos.

[Joe]
S/O is a description of cosmic evolution mechanical O, and proprietary 
awareness evolution S. IMO Ham proposes that a shock, nothingness, is 
necessary for PA evolution. Proprietary awareness with another shock, 
payment, can consciously evolve to enlightenment. Cosmic evolution O, 
proprietary awareness S shocked by payment evolves to conscious 
enlightenment, SOE.

[Case]
So you had to drag Ham in. I don't speak Hamish and don't endorse his
trolling for disciples here. But I will say this any focus on a future
purpose, be it enlightenment, or cosmic good or whatever, is just a lot of
hot air.