[MD] A fine mess

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Bo,

Thanks for addressing my response.
Now, one point off at a time, before you go off changing the subject again.
(None of this was in the Liverpool presentation .... I'm not claiming
anything remotely new, just explaining something very basic.)

Ultimately we agree (in your conclusion) many things previously seen
as mystical / expressed in mystical terms are made more coherent (with
non-mystical things) by the MoQ. That's the easy bit. How ? has been
the question for a long time.

But you are lost from my first para. So we won't pass go for now.

My logic is the same as yours.
I'm just applying it to different things.
Simple enough statements ?

>From here on, I'm not going to say anything "mystical" (unless I make
a specific reference to mystical things).
So for now trust me on that, and if I lose you again stop and ask.

OK Same logic. So what different things ?

Well firstly I'm going to be careful not to "objectify" things to
quickly, though it will be symbolically / linguistically convenient to
do so sometimes, even then we must beware that the objects may not be
as discrete tangible as we think before we apply our logical arguments
to them.
No, I am happy to think of things as POV's for our purposes, since it
avoids the objectification.
(Within and across MOQ levels, all shapes and sizes, more or less
static and/or dynamic.)

I'm not going to presume any particular ontology or category of
things, but I am talking about the things we are talking about,
Everything from reality as a whole, the MoQ itself, MOQ things, like
Quality, DQ, SQ, Levels, etc ... our bread and butter.
Everything from grains of sand to herds of elephants, the price of tea
in China, this e-mail dialogue, ... you name it.

I'll take our understanding of the MOQ levels approximately as read, for now.
I'll take our understanding of the Static and Dynamic as read, for now.
We can come back to their defintitional details (our apparent problem) later.

The subject I'm trying to get us onto is the dimension of scale and
complexity involved. And I'm trying to get us to think about this
subject as we look at the physical, living, social, intellectual
levels.

By scale ... everything from particles and nano-seconds and
hairs-breadths to cosmological objects ... the things that keep
physicists awake at night.
By scale ... everything from individual proteins, viruses & microbes,
to a colony of fungi, individual humans, to a conference at Liverpool
university or the US electorate, to the Geneva convention.

Big complicated things (big POV's), composed or caused (or related in
some sense) of many tiny things (little POV's).
When I talked (in the previous mail) about applying the same logic to
the different levels of things, I was talking about scale and
complexity within and across the physical / living / social /
intellectual levels of the MoQ.

Many of the POV's we actually talk about are spread across these
levels of MoQ and scale.

Without trying to guess anything about why, have I said anything that
isn't clear ?
Check off my points for me.
Then I can continue.
Regards
Ian

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 10:01 PM,  <skutvik at online.no> wrote:
> Ian
>
> Wed. Dec 3. you wrote:
>
>> OK, so Bo, no place to hide ;-)
>> Picking up on that schizophrenia (agreeing and denying in the same
>> "apparent" logic).
>
> We have been at these frightening heights for years and are close to
> suffocating, inhaling and exhaling - agreeing and denying - in the same
> breath.
>
>> (And leaving aside any personal name calling "the intellectuals", "the
>> menagerie", "the new-agers" .... we're all at it one way or another if
>> we're being honest ... it's called heated debate, it's rhetoric, it's what
>> "interested" people do. So ...)
>
>  Right!
>
>> Please therefore address the considered response to you on that
>> logical bind that leads to the schizophrenia.
>> (Reposted below, since you seem to have missed it.)
>
>                  -----------------------------------------.
>
>
>> > We get to the real root of the problem Bo. We use the term SOMist
>> > about the focus on subjects and objects (yawn), but in fact a problem is
>> > indeed in our adherence to "logic" when we use these objects. (NB "logic
>> > when we use ...", not logic per se.) So.
>
>> > You are right I do do "violence" to certain kinds of "SOMist logic" as I
>> > have freely admitted. The argument is not simply logic vs faith as you
>> > would have it, but belief in different kinds of logic. You are just as
>> > wedded to your view of logic as you think I am to some other mysterious
>> > kind of logic. Because the latter is mysterious to you and the former
>> > isn't, you call the one logic and the other faith. But, listen ... I
>> > really am an engineer / scientist / manager - I'm no mysterian ...
>
>
> I read your post in its time, however you have a gift for becoming ... (fill
> in) and your juggling with the different kind of logics baffled me. I think
> logic is universal but the premises determines the outcome of
> whatever medium's wandering through the logical gates. Had "Symbol
> Logic" been universal things would have been easy. IMO the
> metaphysics in the (no one can avoid... ) sense deliver the premises.
>
> Mysticism from a religious p.o.v. is contact with God and we know
> Pirsig equals it with dynamic experience and this may be his Zen
> leaning because Eastern religion/tradition is supposed to be mystical.
> But dynamics is no no place to stay and Pirsig made it back (just) and
> wrote a metaphysics that has the Dynamic/Static dichotomy as its
> premises. Not as he has it, that he could have constructed any sort of
> dichotomy and it would still be a MOQ.
>
>> In my kind of (dependent-arising / circular / recursive /
>> strange-loopy) logic, which is "mysterious" to you (ie not logic), the
>> basic tenets of your kind of syllogistic logic are not violated, it's just
>> that they have to be applied to the right levels of things (I hesitate to
>> say "objects"). So there is a reductionism required, a "non-greedy" kind
>> of reductionism, to explain all the processes (quite logically) in the
>> physical levels but that explanations at one level are not simply "causes"
>> in another. They are part of interactive two-way-causal processes, not
>> one-way causations - closer to quality in fact, or inclusionality. The
>> things we see as (as if) causes and effects in the macro
>> (non-reductionist) world are not governed by simple logic in that world.
>> The loops of interactivity cross levels, and we get "emergence" or
>> "dependent arisings".
>
> Here you climb even higher and I have trouble following your. I have
> the same trouble with your presentation at the Liverpool conference (I
> have the video) but you are a sympathetic fellow ;-)
>
>> When I talk about being "pragmatic" I am certainly not taking us back
>> to some time before the objects of science were available for logicald
>> analysis. I'm just saying that in the macro, everyday world, the one
>> in which we need to make day to day decisions, we should not be
>> surprised to find breakdowns in simple logical relationships between
>> objects at this macro level. Probability based on experience needs to
>> plug such holes in strict logic (at this level). Avoid analysis
>> paralysis, and live. It's a "radical" kind of pragmatism, but a
>> post-MoQ enlightened kind, not an ignorant kind. In fact, it's wisdom
>> for want of a better word.
>
> I take this to mean that on the practical plane the distinction between
> things (in the most ordinary sense) and ourselves is valid, but this
> takes us back to times immemorial so it's not your idea. Well, our
> natural static home is the intellectual level where the S/O - as reason -
> rules*) this is what I mean by "pragmatism", namely that we may go
> about intellect's business - as scientists even, as particle physicist
> even - from the premises that its S/O distinction isn't absolute, that no
> elementary particle will be found. This goes for all S/O offsprings and
> the scientific disciplines based on those.
>
> *)  Other cultures may have the social level their abode, it has nothing
> to do with being clever, smart or intelligent.
>
>> The sophists, rhetoricians and poets (and sages) actually get closer
>> to communicating this than I have, but enlightened science really is
>> converging on the same picture, without giving up it's logical tenets,
>> just its unfounded certainty in tangible objects in any given level, to
>> which it erroneously applies that logic all too easily.
>
> There has been many of the mentioned categories who have
> encountered the mystical, dynamical aspect of existence, but only the
> MOQ has made it into a coherent metaphysics.
>
> As always in my opinion.
>
> Bo
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