[MD] Tit's

[MarshaV]

Hi Krimel,

I am not even close to being able to properly explain any of this emptiness 
concept to you.  But I'd like to try one little aspect.  A thing that would 
inherently exist (like a thing-in-itself) would be an entity that would not 
depend on anything or not be subject to change of any kind.  (Which leads to 
Ron's post on illusion and reminds me of RMP's crystallization experience.) 
But I'm not sure that is your understanding of a thing-in-itself.  Anyway, 
to say more than that makes no sense because of my limited understanding and 
limited skill at explaining, and your lack of curiosity to read beyond 
Wikipedia.

I imagine child development is very interesting.  I've been watching my 
grandson for four years absorb language and the world around him.  It is 
quite remarkable.

Marsha






----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Krimel" <Krimel at Krimel.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Tit's


> [Marsha]
> I remember a while back you ardently defending tit's.  I think maybe you
> have softened your view.  Are tit's independent, autonomous entities, or
> not?  Example?  Are tit's patterns?  Or something different?
>
> [Krimel]
> I just finished a book on child development call "The Scientist in the
> Crib." It looks at some of the remarkable discoveries that have been made
> over the past 25 years with regards to how children's brains and thoughts
> and sense of morality develop as they grow up. The authors claim that the
> three great problems of childhood are the problem of the external world, 
> the
> problem of other minds and the problem of language. Sound familiar?
>
> What they show is that infants exit the womb remarkably well suited to
> solving these problems. We are not blank slates. For example the visual
> system in newborns is not at all like that of older children. In fact
> newborns could be classified as legally blind and for years this was the
> dominant understanding. However, if we look a little more closely we see
> that newborns are extraordinarily near sighted. For them the world 
> actually
> comes into pretty good focus at about 9 inches. That is the world that 
> their
> visual system processes is the face of whoever is holding them. Imagine a
> newborn entering the world with 20/20 vision. The task of dealing with all
> of that information would be overwhelming. Nature has spared newborns of
> this and instead focuses their attention on the most important part of 
> their
> new worlds, Mama. It is no mystery from an evolutionary stand point that 
> we
> are born prepared to deal with the world we must survive in. What is
> surprising is how well prepared we are to adapt to the world we find
> ourselves in.
>
> The issue I am driving at here is that it is true that we know only the
> world of our sense impressions and our stored recollections of past
> experience. It is not possible for us to have direct experience of 
> anything
> outside of our nervous systems. Experience IS activation of the nervous
> system. The question really is: Can we trust our senses to provide 
> accurate
> information? Can we trust ourselves to accurately interpret this
> information? Again the evolutionary response is yes because if our senses
> where not functionally accurate we would not survive. Our senses are 
> finely
> tuned to give us information about the world that is relevant to our
> survival.
>
> In short our senses have evolved to help us apprehend TiTs. It is 
> certainly
> possible to doubt whether TiTs actually exist. From a purely skeptical
> position is it is not possible to discount all of the scenarios that would
> have us deceived by clever demons or have our disembodied brains floating 
> in
> vats or that cast us as immortal deities living in self imposed exile out 
> of
> boredom. Idealism, extreme phenomenology, some forms of mysticism and
> numerous religious notions are ongoing incarnations of this kind of
> thinking.
>
> I suppose I could advance all manner of reasons why I am so willing to
> accept the fact the TiTs do in fact exist. I think our sensations are 
> rooted
> in something outside of ourselves. But as I have said many times in the 
> past
> it all boils down to faith. Whatever rational spin I might put on the
> matter, in the end my belief in the existence of an external world is 
> rooted
> in a sense of rightness and not in rationality at all.
>
> [Marsha]
> p.s.  If you haven't read Nagarjuna, I will have to think of you as a 
> monk,
> and not a wizard.   Although a useful monk.
>
> Ron:
> I think what Krimmel (sic) needs to distinguish, and I'm not sure that 
> Kant
> does, is differentiate between noumena and things in themselves.
> Roughly, a noumenon may be distinguished from the following concepts,
> although there is debate of the synonymity between them:
>
> [Krimel]
> I am way too lazy to read either of these guys in the original. I will 
> make
> do with the Sparknotes or Wiki versions. I appreciate the originality of
> such thinkers but in end I think their views are flawed by ignorance just 
> as
> our current views will seem similarly flawed to future generations. While
> they are both interesting for historical reasons, history is not my 
> primary
> interest.
>
>
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/