[MD] moq thought experiement 1.

Tue Jul 1 15:33:21 PDT 2008

Hi David,

I was hoping you were just being funny.  I love reading your posts.  You are 
humorous and creative, and intelligent.  Squonk's thought experiment never 
made any sense to me, but it seemed right for him to try it.  But I was a 
little concerned that you might be objecting to the unpleasantness of the 
experiment itself, which was stated to be just a mental exercise.  Squonk's 
a creative guy too.

Nobody wants to be there or enjoys it.  It's called a descent into hell, not 
a trip to happy hour.  Hopefully it's a short visit, and there's not much 
blood.  Actually, it's a horrible job, but somebody has got to do it. 
Metaphorically...   Maybe I'm wrong.  What did Joseph Campbell have to say?

Am I lecturing?  Doesn't sound very Zen.  Sorry.

Marsha

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] moq thought experiement 1.

>
> Marsha sais to dmb:
> I don't get much from Squonk's mental exercise, but I do not understand 
> your objection to his thought experiment.   I would think the mind would 
> be the perfect place to perform such a controlled experiment.  One could 
> imagine the problems, test different solutions, and thoroughly explore all 
> aspects without doing harm to anyone.  (As has been pointed out by stating 
> the difference between an infant and an enlightened Buddha.)  The question 
> for me is, if you would object to such a philosophical thought experiment, 
> would you also want to inhibit the artist's imagination?
>
> dmb replies:
> Well, first of all let me say that I understand a thought experiment is 
> something we think about rather than put into practice. And I have to ask 
> in all seriousness, who doesn't understand that?
>
> The reason I object is very simple. I think its a bad idea. Don't you know 
> me by now? Expressing disagreement with folks around here is my favorite 
> hobby. Been doing it for years. And most of the time mysticism will be 
> involved in that disagreement. Hard to imagine how any MOQer could be 
> surprized or fail to understand why I'd engage in this current round of 
> disagreements. Basically, I think it all hinges on a flawed premise. By 
> equating those who have transcended static patterns with those who never 
> acquired them in the first place, static patterns have been construed as 
> irrelevant or even as something negative. Even though its just an "idea", 
> preventing human minds from developing is still objectionable on moral 
> grounds. If one is going to include any kind of cruelty or deprivation as 
> part of a thought experiment, I reckon there ought to be a very good 
> reason for it. But in this case, the reason for it, to maximize DQ, is 
> based on the fallacious equation of babies and mysti
> cs. In the case of infants, there is no possibility of getting consent 
> from the subject. Of course, if I thought it was an actual proposal I'd do 
> more than complain about it in cyberspace. I'd call Scotland Yard or the 
> FBI. But so far I'm just saying the experiment is poorly designed, that it 
> is based on a misunderstanding of the MOQ, as well as infants and mystics. 
> But now I'm just repeating myself.
>
> The original "brain in a vat", or at least the one I know of, is a good 
> example of a thought experiment. If memory serves, it can be found in "The 
> Mind's Eye". This asks us to imagine that a brain can be kept alive and 
> healthy in a lab. (The owner volunteered and would otherwise be dead of 
> natural causes.) What would happen if another researcher wanted to take 
> half the brain to his lab and they figured out a way to do that while 
> keeping the whole mind in tact via electronic connections, even though the 
> two halves would be very far away from each other physically. Then 
> interest in this divided brain grew and grew so that 10,000 researchers 
> each had a small section of this single brain and it was all still 
> connected via electronics, etc. What if each lab had just a single brain 
> cell? This thought experiment asks us to think about the mind/body problem 
> in a novel way. If the brain is scattered in billions of locations - all 
> over the planet, under the ocean and in orbit too - the
> n where is the mind? In what sense is it in the brain at this point? This 
> illustrates the issue so that one really gets a sense of what the 
> mind/body problem is all about. Doesn't have much to do with the MOQ, but 
> that's how I remember the brain in the vat experiment and I think its 
> pretty cool. It doesn't provide any answers but it paints a clear picture 
> of the question. It helps us grapple with the question.
>
> So far, my objections have been met with explicit and implicit accusations 
> of censorship, philosophological thinking, unoriginal thinking, of having 
> no argument, of arguing from authority, of using twisted rhetoric, of 
> using humor and emotion, of relying too much on Pirsig's thought, of 
> straying outside Pirsig's thought and now with a wish to inhibit the 
> creative imagination. But I don't think my objections are out of bounds or 
> unfounded in the least and so all those accusations seems quite 
> unwarranted to me, even a bit over the top. Like everybody else here, I'm 
> just talking and trying to make sense of the MOQ. Obviously, I do not have 
> the power to censor anyone and really wouldn't know how to inhibit the 
> imagination of an artist. What the heck? Let's just say I object because I 
> hate freedom and apple pie. Let's say I belong to a cult that worships 
> highly educated babies and I'm secretly trying to convert all the MOQers. 
> The other accusations are a little less silly, but not
>  by much.
>
> I'm saying that a mystical experience occurs within the context of a 
> person's developmental process. Squonk's experiment is all about arresting 
> that development from the start, so this would be a pretty major 
> objection. Frankly, I don't think there is much doubt that Squonk is 
> mistaken on this point. Here's one of the bigger planks that form the 
> basis of my objection...
>
> "...From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not what, compels 
> attention, This generalized 'something', Whitehead's 'dim apprehension', 
> is Dynamic Quality. When he is a few months old the baby studies his hand 
> or a rattle, not knowing it is a hand or a rattle, with the same sense of 
> wonder and mystery and excitement created by the music and heart attack in 
> the previous examples. If the baby ignores this force of Dynamic Quality 
> it can be speculated that he will become mentally retarded, but if he is 
> normally attentive to DQ he will soon begin to notice differences and then 
> correlations between the differences and then repetitive patterns of the 
> correlations. But it is not until the baby is several months old that he 
> will begin to really understand enough about that enormously complex 
> correlation of sensations and boundaries and desires called an 'object' to 
> be able to reach for one. This object will not be a primary experience. It 
> will be a complex pattern of static
>  values 'derived' from primary experience. ...In this way static patterns 
> of value become the universe of distinguishable things. Elementary static 
> distinctions between such entities as 'before' and 'after' and between 
> 'like' and 'unlike' grow into enormously complex patterns of knowledge 
> that are transmitted from generation to generation as the mythos, the 
> culture in which we live. ...In the past Phaedrus' own radical bias caused 
> him to think of Dynamic Quality alone and neglect static patterns of 
> quality. ..But now he was beginning to see that this radical bias weakened 
> his own case. Life can't exist on Dynamic Quality alone. It has no staying 
> power. To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is 
> to cling to chaos. ...Static quality patterns are dead when they are 
> exclusive, when they demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change, 
> But static patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force 
> to protect Dynamic progress from degeneration
> . Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in 
> which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, 
> preserve our world, Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without 
> the other." (Lila, pages 119-121, near the end of chapter 9)
>
> I think the worry that our culture will degenerate by slipping back to the 
> social level, as opposed to being led by intellectual values, is 
> consistent with the basic idea that static patterns "provide a necessary 
> stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress". The idea of evolution as a 
> kind of static latching applies this same idea to the widest possible 
> context. If I'm correct on this point and it shuts down the experiment, 
> that still doesn't make me a censor. It just makes me a guy who pointed 
> out a big mistake, who disagreed with a bad idea, who still enjoys his 
> favorite hobby.
>
> Thanks,
> dmb
>
>
>
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