[MD] Discrete & Dependent

[Magnus Berg]

Good afternoon! (At least it was afternoon when I started writing)

>> I get kind of sad reading this, it seems you have given up on much of 
>> what reality is about and only see it as dead, conceptualized static 
>> patterns, as if you're seeing the world through a TV.
> 
> Not true.  I am trying to understand the basis of "reality".  I have no 
> dog in this fight.   As I begin to see through the illusion of 
> reification, it all becomes more beautiful.  Do you get that?

Actually, no. To "see through" an illusion, do you mean that you begin to 
realize that the illusion was false, or that it's true?


>> What I said was that the *scale* is experiencing the weight, not the 
>> human user of the scale. The scale itself. It's man made, but so what?
> 
> The "scale" is experiencing the weight?  It's all analogy.  Conceptual.
> 
> This morning I was wondering what is wrong with conceptual?  Nothing 
> really.  What IS wrong is misinterpreting it.  So why the sudden silence 
> when I said it's conceptual?   Is it that 'conceptual' is translated 
> into 'subjective'?  And therefore less than 'reality'?

I translate conceptual into "an intellectual static representation of something 
else", and phenomenal into "a dynamic, cutting edge, real-time experience". Note 
that the real-time experience is always of a certain level, but it can be any 
level, also intellectual.

Perhaps I'm trying to mold your conceptual/phenomenal split into something you 
didn't intend? But I don't see conceptual as subjective, it's rather more 
closely related to what we usually mean by objective. Either way, it does sound 
less real than phenomenal because of its static nature.

> ALL CONCEPTUAL.  I am NOT saying that there isn't a phenomenal world.  I 
> think there is.  It's that our experience of it is conceptualized.  Mostly.

I may be lost as to what you mean with conceptual. Of course my story about the 
elephant is conceptual to us, but not to the elephant.

>> What? Is the fact that you can *think* something, proof of it being 
>> conceptual?
> 
> Yes.

I disagree. The thought of the original phenomenon is of course conceptualized 
and static and dead and all, but not the original phenomenon at the time of 
experiencing it.

>> The experiences you mentioned, touch, see, smell, hear and taste, are 
>> just biological value. Are you saying that only biological value are 
>> real to you?
> 
> No conceptual experiences are real too, empirically real, conventionally 
> real.  A real that is dependent on ever-changing, collections of 
> overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological, social and 
> intellectual, static patterns of value.

Be careful with that slogan. You know it doesn't mean anything if you can't 
connect it to a coherent model of reality.

> Biological experiences are immediately conceptualized.  I do not see 
> them as much different than analogs.

I disagree again. In my essay I claim that biological value are based on the 3D 
fitness of different molecules. If two molecules fit well, (like the computer 
game Tetris but in 3D), it's biologically high value. In such a scenario, there 
are no concepts involved, only a real-time, cutting-edge experience.

It's only in larger animals that biological value is almost immediately 
conceptualized, but there is still such a thing as direct biological experience.

> There is nothing left to do with my paintings but to perceive them which 
> leads directly to conceptualization.  The viewer's conceptualization.  
> As the painter I had the added privilege of conceptualizing each 
> individual paint application.  Want to know what's on my mind and in my 
> heart when I paint?  Nope.  I'm not telling.

No, I was not after your thoughts when you paint. Obviously a bad example.

> Yes, gravity is an experience, a conceptual experience.

A "conceptual experience"? Perhaps I got your phenomenal/conceptual split all 
wrong after all?

	Magnus