[MD] What is SOM?

[Krimel]

[dmb]
Yea, I think we really were talking past each other. Well, to be less
generous about it, I think you're flying at the wrong altitude. As I see it,
you're saying "look, these are just the facts" because you somehow imagine
that I'm not familiar with the facts. But I keep trying to tell you that the
facts are not in dispute. Data is data and the MOQ totally accepts it as
such. All along, the point has simply been that science does not have the
last word on how to interpret those facts. For that you need ideas, not more
facts.

And this confusion is complicated by the "fact" that science operates on the
myth of objectivity, which is to say the belief that it has no pre-conceived
ideas, that it is simply recording the facts. The myth of objectivity, then,
is precisely the failure to recognize the ideas as such through which these
facts are interpreted. And subjects and objects are the ideas that give rise
to the myth of objectivity. In other words, science doesn't see itself as
testing the idea of objectivity but as investigating objective reality
itself. This is SOM essentialism and there is no way to understand the MOQ
in those terms, except as the view it rejects. 

[Krimel]
I think we talk past each other because you really are not talking to me at
all. Pirsig talks at one point about what a lousy scholar he is because he
reads people and picks what he agrees with and argues with them in his head 
when he thinks they are wrong. I do the same. We all do. But it is easier to
get away with when the other person is either dead or uninterested. I have
commented on your slipshod reading of others in the past, for example. But
you go on misinterpreting folks none the less. The result is failure to
engage.

For example you say that, "Data is data and the MOQ totally accepts it as
such." But you fail to offer any account of the data and criticize my
attempts to do so simply because I use data. It is not that I am using data
in a particularly offensive or metaphysically unsound way. It is the simple
use of data at all that seems to rile you.

You say for example that pre-intellectual experience is a 'unity', as though
this were some metaphysically inviolable assertion. I say bullshit.
Pre-intellectual experience is clearly multimodal. This is obvious for ANY
metaphysical perspective. Even a solipsist knows that vision comes through
the eyes, sound come through the ears... Personal experience even at the far
extreme range of your misreading of James will show that memory is different
than primary experience and these are synthesized from the fragments of the
preintellectual into the illusion of unity at the intellectual level of
perception.

I began to provide at rather extended account of the MoQ levels in terms of
patterns that made no reference to substance at all. Such an account I
thought was metaphysical in that it applied regardless of how one ultimately
takes patterns to be constituted.

I tried to show how our first assumptions are identical. I altered my
Cartesian formulation of I think, therefore I am. To yours, I experience,
therefore, I am.

I then became to look at Static patterns merely as static patterns without
respect to patterns of what. I tried to show how patterns at the inorganic
level are fundamentally different from biological patterns in that inorganic
patterns occur mainly as strange attractors. Inorganic patterns are static
over a much longer periods of time and do not actively or dynamically
contribute to their own persistence in time.

Biological patterns persist through replication. Their individual
manifestations or iterations are relatively short. It is the process of
iteration that maintains biologically static patterning. Also, genetic
patterns persist in response to their participation in their overall
environment. But again we see strange attractors of a new order of emergent
evolution. Individuals within a species manifest a collection of traits and
it is the distribution of those traits within a population that define a
species.

I concluded with, "Human's, which of course is what this is all about, can
respond and adapt conditions everywhere on the planet. What is our most
outstanding capacity in this regard is an elaboration of a strategy the
works for almost all biological patterns. This is the ability to allow past
experience to influence present behavior."

I meant by this that the MoQ in so far is the levels are concerned is not
really particularly metaphysical at all. It begins with the inorganic. To
get to the biological level it throws away or discounts everything that is
not biological. To get to the social level it must discount all the rest of
the biological strategies and adaptations that occur in biology. Then to get
to the intellectual level is must... Well, I gave an account of that but no
one thought it worthy of further mention. My point here is that at the point
that the MoQ becomes pluralistic all of the pluralism is completely
anthropocentric. It is a subjective account of experience.

You claim that mystical experience allows us access to some new set of data.
What is that data, Dave? I think that data, and it is data that I have tried
to be specific about, tells us something about the range of possible states
of consciousness. It shows us that we can train ourselves to respond in ways
that were not previously thought possible. For example, some people can
learn to gain a measure of control over their autonomic processes. You seem
to think that this mystical experience can be a guide into the realm of
physics. I don't see how you can conclude at an entirely private experience
of any kind can serve as a guide to a shared understanding of how static
patterns are perceived and understood.

As I have said repeated and clearly that the caricature of scientism you
rail against is certainly not me. Despite your assurance that you are on top
of the literature in this area, your failure to engage it suggests
otherwise. You keep bitching at Ian about spouting drivel and yet your own
comments are so insubstantial at times I don't know what else to call them.
You ignore what I actually am saying and whine about what you think I have
said based on something you didn't like that someone else said.

We are talking past each other because you are flying high in the rarified
breeze. You are talking past me because you are flying through a fluffy
white fog. 

You said, "Human's, which of course is what this is all about, can respond
and adapt conditions everywhere on the planet. What is our most outstanding
capacity in this regard is an elaboration of a strategy the works for almost
all biological patterns. This is the ability to allow past experience to
influence present behavior."

But you steadfastly refuse to engage the facts from any perspective
whatsoever. The MoQ is not an excuse for shoddy thinking and ignoring the
facts. It is one thing to say that facts are open to multiple interpretation
but quite another to just disregard them. Not does it mean that statements
unsupported by any kind of facts should be taken seriously. You sound like
Ham.

You want to claim that pre-intellectual experience is a unity. I have
presented facts to assert it is not. I claim that unity is a cognitive
illusion that only occurs at the level of perception. It is the result of
the synthesis of multimodal sensory input and memory of past experience. 

You say, "When you start answering that question, you'll be flying at right
altitude. Then, instead of talking past each other, we'll crash in midair.
It'll be spectacular."

I would look forward to any engagement at all. But I am afraid that in order
for that to happen you will need to get your head out of the clouds and pay
attention to what I am saying instead of what you assume I mean. Fly above
the clouds or fly under them I will meet you on either plane. I have
addressed the facts. I have addressed them from an MoQ perspective. I have
given detailed accounts of what I think that perspective means and why.

This post is exactly the kind of boring repetitious, I said, you said,
rehashed, failure to address anything substantial kind of crap I really hate
reading when others write them. Most often I see this is your posts with
Matt back and forth, long accounts of what was said and what was meant and
what was misunderstood. Maybe you inspire this kind of pointless rambling
but I have every confidence that you can rise above. Just focus on the
points at issue. You can do it Dave. I know you can.