[MD] Tit's

[Krimel]

dmb,
What you offer up is an impressive bit of philosophology about which I have
very little to say other than I plan to listen to the Dreyfus lectures as
soon as time allows. And I did seek them out based on the earlier
discussions you mention.

I will concentrate instead on what I take to be the critical aspects of your
commentary. As you say, I do indeed think that mind arises from matter. I
regard life as an emergent property of matter. I regard "mind" as an
emergent property of life. As I have stated so many times that I am
perfectly willing to call my personal acceptance of this view a "skip of
faith". It is a primary assumption; a starting point. It is, I would argue,
an assumption held tentatively and subject to change. It says nothing at all
really about the nature of matter or material substance. It is merely the
conviction that some form of reality exists independent of my ideas about
it. I believe that this independent reality is orderly. I believe that
humans arise as a product of this reality prepared to detect that order, to
see patterns in that order and to use those patterns to reduce uncertainty.
That is, we create knowledge and meaning in such a way as to increase the
likelihood of replicating ourselves. And by this I mean creating others like
us both physically and socially.

I fully realize that there is a long history and present flurry of debate
into the nuances of these assumptions. While this is all very stimulating,
entertaining and amusing is does little to seriously challenge these
assumption or to detract from the benefits of making them. 

If I were pressed to advance a rationalization for making these assumptions
I would say, because they stir in me an emotional and asthetic feeling of
rightness. I see within them a coherence that is appealing both rationally
and empirically. If I were pressed on why I would accept these assumption of
over some others I would say because the first argument in the MoQ is over
monism versus dualism. The MoQ sides with monism.

You suggest some implied dualism when you say, "The dualism exists here in
the form of the source of the sense data and the physiological transduction
of the data. In other words, the objective reality and the reception of it
by the subject." But what is happening is that energy from the environment,
(thermal energy, light, chemical energy, etc) is being transduced into
electro-chemical energy. Energy changing form is not dualistic. Even matter
or the dreaded "material substance" is a form of energy.

I would say that materialism, in a broad sense of the term, provides a
monism that, as it is being pursued by science, offers a fairly
comprehensive view of the life the universe and everything. Thousands of the
brightest and best in a wide variety of disciplines over the past 400 years
have united in the task of providing explanations of how and why we are
here. I see no serious flaws in either the approaches being used, the
assumptions being made or the results that poor forth from them.

Nor do I think the MoQ is in conflict with this view. In fact I would say
the MoQ supports and enhances it. Consider even the secondary issue of
levels in the MoQ. We begin as does science with the inorganic level. Within
science this level of physics and chemistry was the first to yield its
secrets and the best understood. This is so in part because the
relationships at this level, inorganic patterns are the most static.
Inorganic patterns and the laws that govern them exist in simpler, more
stable patterns than at any other level. The inorganic moral order as far as
we can tell is invariant. The forces and patterns of space/time and energy
are fixed and/or predictable within a very narrow range of probability.

At this particular space and time the arrangement of inorganic patterns is
of the right mix of patterns and relationships to allow the existence of
higher level patterns to emerge. Among these patterns would be the
gravitational relationship of earth to the sun, moon and other planets, the
mix of chemical elements present on the surface and atmosphere of the planet
and a temperature that allows those elements to exist in the three of the
different states of matter, solid, liquid and gas.

Biological patterns depend upon stability at the inorganic level. While
those inorganic patterns do not specify precisely the pattern of emergent
biological organisms, they do establish a limit on the range of possibility
at the biological level. This is the value of reductionism. It is not that
understanding the laws of physics predicts the rules of chess. But the rules
of chess are constrained by the laws of physics and biology. They set limits
on the kinds of rules that are possible the materials that piece and board
can be made of the complexity of the rules etc., etc. Biological patterns
are more fluid, subject to change and are able to adapt to change within
certain limits. In other words to biological level depends on stasis at the
inorganic. We can say all kinds of things about biology without reference to
physics or chemistry. But understand the laws of physics and chemistry
greatly enhances our understanding of biology and the kinds organisms that
can exist and the finds of relationships that can exist among them.

I think the MoQ levels break down at this point because both social
structure and intellect, even language appears in our species as biological
adaptations. Not to mention the inability to define what the intellectual
level even is. But nevertheless within the MoQ inorganic patterns are
fundamental.

You spend a lot of time talking about language related issues from a
philosophological perspective. I think much of that debate is misguided.
Language, as I just said is a biological adaptation. It allows members of
our species to communication complex ideas. It facilitates the formation of
complex ideas. But rather than limit the range of our perception, it vastly
enhances them. Nor does language as such fix our perceptions into some rigid
mold. Language changes and adapts to meet changes in our conception of the
world. We add new words and phrases constantly. We change usages and the
vary structure of the spoken word to accommodate new concepts. 

The spoken languages of the world are not so very dissimilar in structure
from one another that translations can not be made and the concepts of one
culture can be represented to members of another culture suggesting that
structure of the spoken word is constrained not just by cultural factors but
because the function of all languages is to affect a correspondence between
individuals and their common experience of the external world.

Much of the function of language centers on symbolic representation of such
purely private experiences as emotional responses, sensory impressions and
private reflections on past experiences. But humans across space, time and
culture have contributed to the construction of a universal mathematical
language that is devoid of emotional ambiguity or the confusion of disparate
private experiences. It is a language that provides a rigorously thought out
and tested description of much of the world we share in common as well as
imaginary worlds that are outside of our experience.

In the case of science one of its tasks to construct a language that
provides ever more precise descriptions of the patterns that make up our
shared experiences. Rather than being the kind of blinders you present it to
be I think of it as the raw materials from which science and math are
constructed.

You seem to claim that somehow this view has crippling limitations that
render it and those who advocate it blind to some larger truth. You seem to
think that the scientific study of the brain for example has nothing of
value to tell philosophers about our perceptions and how they are formed.
And yet all you seem to offer in return is some vague nattering about
esthetics of solitary feelings of oneness based on purely private
experience.

With regards to the slamming door I think you are missing a critical point.
I suspect it is the same critical point that leads you to imagine that we
can have experiences that do not depend on sense impressions. We can not.
Whatever "perception" you have of the sound of slamming depends on the
acoustic vibrations AND your history of past experiences. You can not
imagine that anger or wind could be associated with similar sounds if you
had not seen and heard those kinds of events paired with similar stimuli in
the past. Our perception and our behavior are based on three factors: our
biology, our history and the stimuli present at the moment. 

While this is particularly true of the slamming door example, Pirsig's hot
stove a bit different. The perception of the slamming door depends in large
measure of the history part of this equation. It depends upon our memory or
internal representation of past events. Sitting on a hot stove emphasizes
the biological aspects of the situation. Our perception of low quality does
not depend so much on our personal memory but the genetic memory of mammals
exposed to heat encoded in our genes.

Finally with regard to the strawmen you invite me to put in my pipe I will
wait until I am down to seeds and stems. In the mean time I would point out
that none of those arguments were phrased in the over simplified language of
the SOM strawman. The fact that you over simplify the arguments to fit the
strawman does tend to argue in favor of your contention that language is
little more than a set of intellectual blinders. But Pirsig does not stay
that we are forced to wear any particular pair of such glasses. We can trade
in one pair of specs for another. We can polish the lenses, wipe away the
smudges. Even you with just a little effort can get a new pair.

Krimel