[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

Case Case at iSpots.com
Sun Jan 21 10:05:00 PST 2007 

David M,

Seriously dude where are you coming from? If my imagined world was totally
unlike the real world I would spend all my time bumping into walls, and
stubbing my toes. Or my responses to my imagined world would be so out of
sync, they would get me locked up. You know they still do offer
electro-shock as a treatment option.

Case

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of David M
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 12:07 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

Case

How is this imagined world compared to the real
world to decide if it is like it?

Think you've gone wrong here somewhere.

David M


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Case" <Case at iSpots.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 6:04 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)


> Ian,
>
> The process of metaphor begins on the cutting edge of experience. As
> sensation is transformed into perception, representations are formed. We
> call them memories. Our thought processes are fundamentally different from
> the things they represent. But we like to think there is some degree of
> correspondence.
>
> Our imagined world is "like" the real world. This is the first metaphor.
>
> In this sense I think it is true to say everything is a metaphor. But
> metaphors are fingers pointing at the moon. The more fingers you can see
> pointing the easier it is to triangulate on what they are pointing at.
>
> Everyday language is a vehicle for expressing metaphor metaphorically.
> Sensation, perception, representation and expression are all stages in the
> process of metaphor.
>
> In the everyday world we survive by assimilating ambiguity. We see the
> likeness and dissimilarity of things and weight their relationships
> accordingly. Certainly metaphors die but often they are only transformed 
> by
> circumstance. Jung was especially able to identify ideas and stories that
> resonate across time and culture. He pointed to images that evoke 
> emotional
> responses in many people and speculated that they had structural even
> evolutionary significance in human awareness.
>
> Perhaps metaphors die. But more likely they are simply expressed
> differently. New metaphors are created and adopted with astonishing speed 
> in
> the modern world. For every one that dies 10 spring up. But dead or alive
> they are still fingers pointing at Quality. The problem is that not all of
> them point in the same direction.
>
> Language is an especially slippery material with which to construct 
> reality.
> The texture and shading of connotation can be especially troubling.
> Mathematic circumvents this through metaphors devoid of ambiguity.
>
> Few of us can tolerate such an unambiguous world, however the metaphors 
> Math
> offers are of such sublime significance that philosophers from the Greeks 
> to
> the Enlightenment to the Post-Moderns have served mainly to aid in the
> assimilation and general understanding of them.
>
> Case
>
> p.s. Ok this does not really follow what you said but this is what you 
> said
> made me think about.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
> [mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of ian glendinning
> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 6:32 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)
>
> Case, (Mark, DMB and Marsha mentioned ...)
>
> I can hear the shouts of obfuscation already ... I have another
> excluded middle here ... but I've seen it like this.
>
> At one extreme the view is "everything is metaphor" - nothing is
> literally real or literal. In some sense I actually subscribe to that
> view, but I'll need to elaborate, and suggest a stiff brandy at this
> point.
>
> One reason I latched onto the Johnson quote you brought up (or was it
> Arlo) is because Lakoff & Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By" and "Fire,
> Women and Dangerous Things" made a big impression on me.
>
> Every piece of language is (or more precisely was) a metaphor, or
> derived from one. A symbol of something else, a gesture, an
> onomatopeic sound, whatever. "Was" is important. Gradually metaphors
> die. (DMB had to point out the open-handshake gesture to us, because
> in daily life the reason for the meaning is forgotten and irrelevant).
> They actually die by the authority of social adoption (as Mark poined
> out, the "accepted" meaning of word is a social phenomenon.). At some
> point we (socially) accept a word's meaning directly from (sight and
> sound of) the word, without thinking there is any metaphor to decode
> first, in fact we positively forget it ever was a metaphor. And the
> provenance of the word may thoroughly disguise the fact it ever had
> any metaphorical connotation, thanks to translation, spread and
> adoption of usage from culture to culture, language to language, and
> don't forget the original languages and cutures that gave us the roots
> of the words die too. (The Sanskrit "Rta" passages of Pirsig are my
> favourites BTW) (Wow, I said all of that without the "m" word - meme
> that is.)
>
> Most words therefore do not seem to be metaphors to us. They are dead
> metaphors. And most are so long dead, we may have no idea where the
> metaphor lies buried, to ever be able to demonstrate its metaphorical
> origins. (Lakoff and Johnson also deal with the invented -
> deliberately meaningless tokens - neologisms that get attached to new
> things too ..... there is always an element of either derivation or
> connotation somewhere ...)
>
> So here you have it. The difference between "metaphorical" and
> "literal" is really just time ... or distance on the evolutionary
> axis.
>
> So if we're talking about our most fundamental (metaphysical) division
> of reality, Quality in this case ... we're still at (haven't even
> reached) base camp on the evolutionary axis. Everything evolves from
> here. Quality is effectively both literal and metaphorical at the same
> time, (possibly a duality ?). Alternatively you could say the
> distinction becomes meaningless.
>
> As Marsha points out quality is not so much undefined, and
> undefinable, as a matter of principle, being the chosen origin for our
> metaphysics. Worrying about defining the meaning of Quality is
> lierally (hah!) pointless. It's simply the chosen (deemed) root of our
> world-view, and a very effective one at that.
>
> We can (must) use literal sounding talk about it without any care as
> to whether there is anything under it on which it is metaphorically
> based.
>
> OK shoot.
> Ian
> PS BTW Case, when you say Pirsig was "talking nonsense" which bits of
> the MoQ do you not buy ?
>
> On 1/19/07, Case <Case at ispots.com> wrote:
>> [IG] But Case, you explained this perfectly already when you said
>> "Johnson's exposition is filled with anthropomorphic metaphors that
>> make his meanings clear when understood as such. When taken literally
>> they become gibberish. Understanding what he says requires the ability
>> to translate his metaphorical language."
>>
>> I couldn't have said it better. It's about explanation and
>> understanding, not literal meaning. If we choose to misunderstand, all
>> language can be made to look like gibberish. Even mine ;-)
>>
>> [Case]
>> Oddly enough the problem works both ways. I originally read Chapter 11 of
>> Lila in this light. It was only after being called on it a couple of 
>> times
>> and on rereading it twice that I finally got the message that he was not
>> speaking metaphorically he really was saying nonsense.
>>
>> I would be especially happy to be proven wrong on this one.
>>
>>
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