[MD] Fw: Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[David M]

> Hi DMB/Matt
>
> I have been round this block with Matt. I think that MOQ
> should be seen as anti-essentialist and that this is hard to
> square with physicalism, and that physicalism is little more
> than making one's views subservient to physics and worse
> end up being materialistic as are most scientists and modern
> philosophers (according to most surveys I've seen).
>
> In line with Pirsig & phenomenology I think we should only
> start to look at how science works and how we might like
> to use concepts like subject and object (they have their uses
> and limitations) after we have thought about how experience
> is presented to us and how we can undertand this with as few
> assumptions as possible, Husserl talks about bracketing off our
> normal assumptions like SOM. Of course Husserl was looking
> for certainties and Heidegger came along to declare that there
> are no certainties to be discover in 'pure experience' which in
> another way of declaring the DQ nature of ordinary experience
> with restircted conceptual baggage. The method of science is
> pretty much a war on DQ in the name of SQ. Science wants to
> find patterns to obtain control over that which can be controlled.
> Therefore the methods of science is pretty much designed to
> banish DQ/creativity/emergence/newness/Nothingness. This is why
> the recogntion of Nothingness/DQ in philosophy like Roy Bhaskar
> and Heidegger, and in Pirsig is about something larger than normal
> science. This is why science cannot explain its own creativity and
> history as a subject. This is why if physicalism is derived from science
> we should not be limited in our thinking by its limited conceptual
> reach/approach. Look at how science works via experiments.
> What is an experiment? It is creating an artificial environment where
> openness is removed from the situation, possibilities are artificially
> removed, and something that can be repeated is created, where only
> a very limited amount of agency or chance or competing forces can
> be present.
>
> On the other hand, what is experience? Generally we are not observers
> but actors and agents doing things. We are in open situations that are
> not unstoppably moving towards a given end. We are the open, we
> are that which changes the underdetermined into something definite.
> We are in an open situation, we may go to work, we may not, we
> are the one forced to choose from a set of choices within a context
> or our given projects/society/body/etc. What is choice other than
> an awareness of the possible strethced out into the future. But we can 
> also
> become observers, sittting indifferently not acting. But can we just sit?
> What is observation? We notice things as Pirsig says. We notice what is
> of value to us or threatens us. Why? What helps or threatens us? Well
> are we not in a state of constant change? The environment is not just 
> there,
> it interacts with us, we absorb heat, we give out energy, we absorb light,
> we exchange gasses, we are in constant change. This change is either
> good or bad, helping our patterns/organism to go on or to cease to
> hold together. Is not consciousness & value/valuation the constant 
> companion of
> change & the need to act (lack of pattern), unconsciousness & indifferenc
> the constant companion to repeating static patterns? So this is pretty
> physcialist is it not? But we need to understand the DQ/conscious/
> valuing aspects of the so-called physical. This would fill in what an
> SQ orientated version of physicalism misses. DQ is also a constituent
> of the physical but in what terms could normal science recognise this?
>
> regards
> David M