[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

Sun Jan 21 12:41:26 PST 2007

Case

Go back and see what you put. You said that we
construct an imaginary reality from sense-input and
then check correspondence to the real world,
but where do you access the real world as
the only 'world' you have is your imagined/conceptual one?
This is the problem with a correspondence theory,
dittto Rorty. Now you appeal to a reality that you
bang into and do not need to conceptually construct.
Get your story straight will you! Do you have a world
prior to this construction perhaps?

David M

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Case" <Case at iSpots.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

> 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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