[MD] moq thought experiement 1.

[Marsha]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] moq thought experiement 1.


>
> [Krimel]
>> Thoughts on TE1:
>> This thread was often hard to read because I had so many
>> reservations about the experiment. It started out as sci-fi but
>> gravitated toward an ill conceived understanding of the
>> brain-in-a-vat scenario. Brain-in-a-vat is a modern variant on
>> Descartes' clever demons argument. It is the idea that our
>> experience is being manipulated by some external agency for
>> purposes of its own which may or not be in harmony with our own.
>
> [Craig]:
>> An ill conceived understanding of the brain-in-a-vat scenario, indeed.
>> Neither the Brain-in-a-vat nor Descartes's clever demons argument
>> is a morality tale.  Their point is epistemological.  In each case it is
>> an attempt to drive a wedge between our experience & reality.
>
> Craig is correct.  (How did we ever manage to turn epistemology into 
> daemonology?)  In fact Descartes never "argued for" demons, nor did he 
> originate the 'Brain-in-a-vat' analogy.  This argument is a contemporary 
> take on the Meditations, by Hilary Putnam and others, specifically where 
> Descartes concedes that his perceptions cannot be trusted, speculating 
> that an evil demon might be controlling his experience, or that he might 
> only be dreaming.
>
> But since Krimel has raised the analogy of an "external agency" 
> manipulating our experience "for its own purposes", how is this different 
> from Pirsig's theory of a moral universe that "moves all things to 
> betterness"?  Whether daemonic or not, if man is programmed by an external 
> agency, he is clearly not a free agent, thus ruling out the possibility 
> that the cognitive subject can choose his own values and direct his own 
> actions in the world.
>
> I submit that it is Pirsig, not Descartes, who has put man in a cosmic 
> "vat" by denying him the autonomy of free choice and self-determination. 
> At least Descartes acknowledged that he was a unique entity whose 
> experience was proprietary and non-transferable.
>
> What are your thoughts on this aspect of "agency"?
>
> --Ham
>
>


Greetings Ham,

Sentient beings are not things, not selves even, but clusters of 
interrelated, ever-changing, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual 
static patterns of value interacting within a field of Dynamic Quality.

Marsha