[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Dan Glover]

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: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 13:17:19 -0400
>
>[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.

It appears to me that something happens or it doesn't. What's the 
probability of it happening?

>But I am betting that there is something external to myself.

That seems a high quality idea. I on the other hand (were I a betting 
person) would bet there isn't. And I think the MOQ says that we would both 
be right.

>But this is not a bet based on a coin toss.

And how does a person win such a bet?

>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.

Quality. I am left with Quality.

>'Certainty' only exists in a present that we have no access to.

If we have no access how do you know certainty exists?

>
>Is our illusion based on something that exists apart from us or is it
>entirely self generating.

Yes.

>Solipsism is the belief that it is self
>generating.

There is no self. Only a concept of self.

>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.

Low quality ideas.

>
>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?

I think it's pretty clear to a normal person growing up in our Western 
culture that something exists outside of self. We're taught subject object 
distinction from birth. So to feel apart and separate from everything else 
is not part of our nature, rather it is a learned response within the 
culture we find ourselves immersed.

Perhaps it might behoove us at this point to ask: what is our nature?

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

I think that's why Quality is so important. Virtue. Arete. There's a 
correspondence between cause and result, which (the Buddha taught) is why 
non-virtuous action leads to suffering.

>
>[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.

Perhaps in a conventional sense. From a Quality point of view there is no 
dualism.

>
> >[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

No fair. No one gets out of the boat alive.

>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.

Materialism is a high quality idea.

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

Aren't we both in the same boat?

>
>
> >[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.

Well, yes... but you've already admitted that all you ever deal with are 
illusions. So I fail to see the problem.

>
> >[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.

Radio waves (as an example) do not necessarily impinge on us or our 
illusions unless we have access to specialized equipment - radio waves are 
circumstances that are not boat until we take specialized equipment and tune 
into the correct frequency, so to speak. And according to certain theories 
there may be other universes impinging on our own but being in the boat we 
see only shorelines and horizons.

Thank you for your comments,

Dan