[MD] Quantum Physics

[Laird Bedore]

Hi Dan,

What if we took his first sentence as saying that objects come from 
ideas, which have a deeper source (Quality) in the MoQ? It seems to me 
he's making a suggestion that the MoQ accommodates the creation of 
quantum theory, and also can accommodate (a retuned) scientific 
objectivism by use of philosophic idealism (pragmatically bridging the 
gap). I read it as being an inclusive suggestion rather than an 
exclusive (disavowing) one. He's allowing for improved explainations of 
phenomena (his slit experiment/light example) to emerge but not 
dictating one in particular: "There may be a higher quality one that 
contradicts [the highest-quality assumption one can make about light]."

Regards,
-Laird


> [Dan Glover]
> Hello everyone
>
> Robert Pirsig from LILA'S CHILD:
>
> I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV
> paper that the key to integrating the MOQ with science is
> through philosophic idealism, which says that objects grow
> out of ideas, not the other way around. Since at the most
> primary level the observed and the observer are both
> intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes of quantum theory
> have to be conflicts of intellectual assumption, not just
> conflicts of what is observed. Except in the case of
> Dynamic Quality, what is observed always involves an
> interaction with ideas that have been previously assumed.
> So the problem is not, “How can observed nature be so
> screwy?” but can also be, “What is wrong with our most
> primitive assumptions that our set of ideas called ‘nature’
> are turning out to be this screwy?” Getting back to physics,
> this question becomes, “Why should we assume that the
> slit experiment should perform differently than it does?” I
> think that if researched it would be found that buried in the
> data of the slit experiment is an assumption that light exists
> and follows consistent laws independently of any human
> experience. If so, the MOQ would say that although in the
> past this seems to have been the highest quality assumption
> one can make about light, there may be a higher quality
> one that contradicts it. This is pretty much what the
> physicists are saying but the MOQ provides a sound
> metaphysical structure within which they can say it. (P 311)
>
> Dan comments:
> In the first sentence, RMP seems to be disavowing any supposed link 
> between quantum theory and the Metaphysics of Quality. In the second 
> sentence he answers all the questions that have arisen in this thread. 
> In the third sentence he is eliminating any possible knowledge of 
> Dyanmic Quality in static quality terms. Finally, Mr. Pirsig fixtures 
> this whole problem as an assumption based on subject-object thinking 
> that the reality quantum theory seeks to reveal is really "out there" 
> existing independently of the observer.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Dan
>
>
>> From: "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net>
>> Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>> Subject: Re: [MD] Quantum Physics
>> Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:19:18 -0500
>>
>>
>> DMB/Laird/Ant/David/Chin/SA --
>>
>> Laird said:
>> > Quantum probabilities and potentialities describe
>> > the likelihood of particular interaction-points
>> > where DQ can become SQ. The quantum observation
>> > "problem" is when we "force" DQ to latch to SQ,
>> > providing us a static value in one quantum-
>> > dimension but thereby eliminating the DQ potentiality
>> > in all others.
>>
>> David said:
>> > It is a very key basic of Quantum theory
>> > that the possible exists, is real and
>> > effects what becomes actual, i.e. possibles form
>> > interference patterns prior to wave collapses (actualisation),
>> > so the actual is a subset of the real.
>> > Hence 'many worlds' suggests that maybe all possibles
>> > become actual in different worlds to retain determinism
>> > i.e. all sets have actuality.
>> > It takes a a big leap to start getting this principle of
>> > quantum theory. I recommend Prigogine's
>> > The End of Certainty.
>>
>> I find it astonishing that a proponent of a philosophy founded on 
>> Quality
>> would seek to explain Reality by the principles of Quantum Physics. 
>> Doesn't
>> this destroy the whole MoQ epistemology that Pirsig labored so hard 
>> to put
>> across? And now we have David urging us into New Age mysticism by
>> speculating that "all possibles become actual in different worlds to 
>> retain
>> determinism."
>>
>> If the intellect is what breaks DQ into the levels and patterns that
>> establish experiential reality, why on earth would a believer in the MoQ
>> attempt to redefine reality by a deterministic theory of creation? 
>> Surely,
>> even if one cannot bring himself to understand intellect as a 
>> property of
>> the observing self, nothing that Pirsig has said or implied about 
>> Intellect
>> would lead us to believe that it is constructed of collapsing 
>> particle/waves
>> or formed by their "interaction points". I submit that the author of MoQ
>> would consider such metaphysical degradation of his philosophy the
>> "lowest-quality" kind of thinking.
>>
>> Read again what Pirsig said about his "source", Quality, and how he sees
>> finite "events" derived from it:
>>
>> "Quality cannot be independently derived from either mind or matter. 
>> But it
>> can be derived from the relationship of mind and matter with each other.
>> Quality occurs at the point at which subject and object meet. Quality 
>> is not
>> a thing. It is an event. It is the event at which the subject becomes 
>> aware
>> of the object. And because without objects there can be no subject, 
>> quality
>> is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made
>> possible. Quality is not just the result of a collision between 
>> subject and
>> object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is 
>> deduced from
>> the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and
>> objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the 
>> Quality!"
>> --[Pirsig: SODV, page 11]
>>
>> Does this sound like an interaction of "quantum probabilities" to you?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ham
>>