[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Case]

[Case]
>Do you actually mean to say: "there is no 'object in itself' lurking behind
what we perceive" or that, "Whether the object exists (or not) is beyond
what we can know since we cannot experience the world directly."

[Dan]
Could you please spell out what difference it makes if we cannot know.

[Case]
I guess that would depend on how important "knowing" is. My own view is that
at this point we can only speak in probabilities ranging from "dead on" to
tossing a coin. But I am betting that there is something external to myself.
But this is not a bet based on a coin toss. You are making much of the fact
that the existence of anything outside this illusion can not be known with
"certainty". If that is the criteria then you are left with nothing.
'Certainty' only exists in a present that we have no access to. 

Is our illusion based on something that exists apart from us or is it
entirely self generating. Solipsism is the belief that it is self
generating. This can not be disproven anymore than it can be disproven that
the whole business is not the work of clever demons. There is no way the
KNOW that this is not the Matrix. All that can be said is that those
possibilities seem very unlikely. 

As for what difference it makes: if you assume that there is actually
something that exists outside of and independent or yourself then you can
ask questions like: does my illusion conform to this other something? How
accurate are my perceptions and reconstructions of it?

If you assume there is "no thing" I guess you are more inclined to just
accept your illusions at face value.

[Dan]
I am pleased that we are in at least partial agreement! I (first) should
state that I'm using 'object in itself' to mean the same as Kant's 'thing in
itself' (the intellectual conception of a thing as it is in itself, not as
it is known through perception) and I'm sorry if you interpreted it
differently (if indeed you did). With that in mind, allow me to offer a
quote from LILA'S CHILD to better illustrate what I'm getting at here:

Annotation 103. Quality in the MOQ is monistic and thus is not the same as
Kant_s _thing in itself_ which is the object of a dualism. (Robert Pirsig)

[Case]
But in the MoQ Quality also produces the dualism of SQ and DQ. 

>[Case]
>At any given moment "riding in the boat" is all that. But the boat is still
a boat, the sky is sky, the water is water and the shore is shore.

[Dan]
Only if we tell ourselves (over and over) that this is so.

[Case]
OK but I for one am will to jump out of the boat and adopt a provisional
materialism solely on the grounds that it seems to me the mostly likely of
the option available. As you point out this can not be proven and I am
willing to confession that I accept this provisionally and purely as a
matter of faith. I accept that all I can ever deal with is an illusion but I
think reconstruction or representation is a better term for it. My task as a
being is to test how accurate a representation I have constructed.

If you assume that there is not really anything to represent or reconstruct
it seems to me you are left spinning your wheels.


>[Case]
>Nevertheless, I believe in the context you set forth cause and condition
are merely properties of the illusion.

[Dan]
And that is why they still apply.

[Case]
But they apply only to a illusion.

>[Case]
>In your metaphor you allude to "circumstances that are not boat"
>but what could that possibly mean?

[Dan]
Human beings exist in a very narrow spectrum outside of which we no
knowledge. For instance, we only see radiation of certain wave lengths, we
only hear certain sounds, etc.

[Case]
These are the constituent parts of our illusion. You seem to imply that
there is nothing else and that these things do not necessarily impinge on us
or our illusions. 

[Dan]
No apology necessary. This is fun.

[Case]
Indeed!