[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters
david buchanan
dmbuchanan at hotmail.com
Tue Oct 17 14:06:46 PDT 2006
Case said to dmb:
Protagoras is alleged to be the first to suggest that we need to turn to the
subject for understanding. Since man is measure of all things perhaps we
should learn a little bit more about man. I am just taking him up on his
suggestion. It seems silly to try to measure things if you know nothing
about your unit of measurement.
dmb says:
Turn to the subject for understanding? Unit of measurement? Huh? Okay,
forget about Skinner, monkeys and all that other stuff for a moment. I'd
like to hit the reset button here and sort of start over. What I'm trying to
say is just that the Protagorian motto is an ancient version of radical
empiricism, which says that all knowledge is derived from experience and
that experiences can't be discounted or ignored in an account of "reality".
Its says experience is all the reality we'll ever get. So the motto in
question is not about measuring things, its about the limits of our reality.
See, I can't experience dog consciousness. I can't expect any answers from
my dog about what she's thinking. I just know that she comes when I call her
name and she gets excited when I promise her "crunchies". There is nothing
wrong with making some assertions based on this behavior. I'm just saying
that animal consciousness is not within our experience even if the behavior
is.
Case also said:
It is clear that you know nothing about Skinner, if you think dropping his
name will help you score with the ladies. It has been my experience that he
acts more like Chick Repellant....
dmb says:
Yea, I know and expected that you do too. That's the piece of knowledge that
makes the joke work. If Skinner helps your social life, you are in a world
of hurt.
Case continued:
...If you think that the study of human behavior and the structure and
function of the brain are irrelevant to an understanding of religious and
mystical experience, or to the nature of consciousness, or to an
understanding of the MoQ perhaps you should start with William James.
dmb says:
As I understand it, William James "invented" radical empiricism so your
advice seems a bit odd here. I mean, my this point is based on James
already. The assertion that brain states and observed behaviors are not
relevant to this issue is based on the MOQ's assertion that human
consciousness is NOT a feature of biological man, not a property of the
organism but is instead a distinct level of reality. Yes, of course I
realize that there have been attempts to get at experience by looking at the
brain states that are correlated with it, but this is only a correlation.
This approach is reductionistic and misleading. This is what I was trying to
get at in pointing out the difference between dialogue between people and
observations of exteriors. Let's take the famous book ZAMM for example.
Let's say we want to evaluate this book. In this case, I'm simply saying
that the book's physical dimensions, its width, length, weight and such is
totally irrelevant to our evaluation. In order to get at the meaning of the
book, in order to experience the book as such, you gotta read it. You gotta
get "inside" the intellectual space and look at it with the mind's eye. See,
radical empiricism says that no experience should be discounted or ignored,
but that also leads to the notion that there are different kinds of
experiences and that we need a plurality of epistemologies to evaluated
them. This simply means that its inapropriate to measure consciouness with a
yardstick. The mystical experience can't be detected by looking at brains or
any other biological organ. There are correlations and that can be
interesting, but I think a valid examination of such experience requires an
entirely different method.
Case said:
Sorry, I was trying to pay proper obeisance oh Favored Son of Bob. Is
"Chosen One" a title more to your liking?
dmb says:
Yea, Robert Pirsig was nice to me in liverpool and said that he likes my
jokes and my rhetoric. Big deal. As far as titles go, Pirsig refered to me
as his "bodyguard", but I've been going with "hack wannabe" for years and
more recently I've claimed "neurotic jackass" as a moniker. I like to think
that all these things are true, but you can call me dave or master of the
universe as long as you gently whisper it in my ear - darling.
Wet sloppy kisses and homophobic A-frame hugs,
dmb
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