[MD] Chance

[Ham Priday]

Ron --


[Ham, previously]:
> But your "pattern" is itself Value, is it not?  So you have
> value sensing value, which is [tautological].  Experience
> must differentiate otherness in order to perceive objects.
> How does one differentiate value from value?

[Ron]:
> If you use the old Greek rhetorical meaning of the word tautology
> perhaps, but...

"In 1921, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein 
proposed that statements that can be deduced by logical deduction are 
tautological (empty of meaning) as well as being analytic truths. Henri 
Poincaré had made similar remarks in Science and Hypothesis in 1905. 
Although Bertrand Russell at first argued against these remarks by 
Wittgenstein and Poincaré, claiming that mathematical truths were not only 
non-tautologous but were synthetic, he later spoke in favor of them in 1918:

"Everything that is a proposition of logic has got to be in some sense or 
the other like a tautology. It has got to be something that has some 
peculiar quality, which I do not know how to define, that belongs to logical 
propositions but not to others."

> Here logical proposition refers to a proposition that is provable
> using the laws of logic.

I should not have used the word "logical", and have corrected my comment 
above to avoid it.  We cannot "prove" anything by logic alone.  The 
proposition A = A does not prove that 'A' exists or does not exist.  Logic 
is only useful for justifying theories within the context of language, where 
the terms are well defined, which is what Russell and Wittgenstein were 
mostly about.  I'm mostly about concepts, as I believe you are also.  So, as 
far as we can help it, let's try not to get mired in word games.

[Ham, previously]:
> Your concept has a nice ring to it, but this epistemology doesn't
> hold up logically [epistemologcally?].

[Ron]:
> The reason why it does not is because Pirsig criticizes this
> classical logic.  He points out that it is based on assumed axioms.
> Truth only has meaning within the context of the paradigm of
> logics laws, it is in no way a concrete universal.
> What is a concrete universal is the experience of being, the
> fact that we exist. The big leap MoQ needs to make is to use
> a radical logic of topos theory which utilizes set logic.
> You see Ham, MoQ is a different animal altogether. To
> criticize it from a classical point of view misses the point
> of it. MoQ is about alternative ways of thinking, an explanation
> of how a Metaphysic is formed, not so much a Metaphysic in
> it's own right.  It initiates critical thinking of the everyday world
> we as human beings inhabit. It points out that many of the
> problems we face really do not exist as we perceive them,
> we get upset and develop a feeling of hopelessness based on
> intellectual constructs. Ones developed by Subject/object
> self/other logic. We feel separated and alone because of it.
> Seeing the world Holistically as patterns of interacting value
> makes the objectification of ourselves and others a bit more difficult
> and less justifiable. Therefore the people that do think Holistically
> find it much tougher to be cold, cruel and unfeeling towards themselves
> Other people and the world in general Realizing the power
> of meaning resides within us. This is not only Pirsig but science
> in general has come to a similar conclusion about what conceptual
> Understanding is and how it functions. The very first realization
> of this was by the fathers of Quantum physics, who stated that
> in effect, we are limited conceptually by what we can say about
> experienced phenomena.

All that is a superbly worded defense of  metaphor to describe the human 
situation.  I try to avoid metaphors, except as a means of making an 
abstract concept more comprehensible.
A metaphor doesn't explain the 'how' or 'why' of a theory; it only provides 
a bit of prose to make the idea more palatable to the reader.  IMO we can't 
expound an ontology using metaphors, which I think to a great extent Pirsig 
tried to do.

I disagree that a "metaphysic" is only a perspective that "initiates 
critical thinking of the everyday world."  The changed perspective should 
arise on reflection of the proposition, after it has been subjected to 
critical thinking.  For example, when you say "We are Quality", I need to 
know if you mean this literally.  Also, I believe the "fathers" of quantum 
physics were limited by the empirical data available, not "conceptually". 
Pirsig analyzed this enigma quite well in his SODV paper:

"Bohr saw that the quantum theory's mathematical formulation had to have a 
connection to the cultural world of everyday life in which the experiments 
were performed.  If that connection were not made there would be no way to 
run an experiment that would prove whether a quantum prediction was true or 
not.  ...Yet as I read through the material even I could see that this was 
not primarily a quarrel about physics, it was about metaphysics.  And I saw 
that others had noted that too.  ...It is only in the last hundred years or 
so that our measurements are showing that the objects we are studying are 
apparently impossible.  Since the phenomena from the measurements are not 
about to change, Bohr concluded that the logic of science must change to 
accommodate them.  ...This view, known as phenomenalism, says that what we 
really observe is not the object.  What we really observe is only data."

My own answer to this is that because the physical world is constructed by 
experience, the dynamics and order of the universe are limited to a 
magnitude perceived by human experience.  Human beings are equipped to deal 
with a macro world, not a quantum world.  So, when we push investigation 
beyond this point, the empirical data become fuzzy and contradictory, and 
the conclusions drawn by physicists are mostly speculative.

Metaphysics, however, must deal with "all possible worlds", so the precise 
arrangement of energy particles and their dynamics can't be its primary 
concern.  More important to the philosopher are the questions "What is the 
stuff of existence?", "From what is this stuff derived?", and, perhaps most 
important, "WHY?"

This is where I'm coming from, Ron, and what I've tried to address in my 
website and book.

Thanks for your continued patience.

Essentially yours,
Ham