[MD] Empirical and Historical

Wed Jul 22 03:28:20 PDT 2009

Here's the full annotation from the back of LILA's Child with additional
questions from Dan.

Annotation 102

RMP:  
I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV paper that
the key to integrating the MOQ with science is through philosophic
idealism, which says that objects grow out of ideas, not the other way
around. Since at the most primary level the observed and the observer
are both intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes of quantum theory
have to be conflicts of intellectual assumption, not just conflicts of
what is observed. Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is
observed always involves an interaction with ideas that have been
previously assumed. So the problem is not, "How can observed nature
be so screwy?" but can also be, "What is wrong with our most
primitive assumptions that our set of ideas called 'nature' are turning
out to be this screwy?" Getting back to physics, this question
becomes, "Why should we assume that the slit experiment should
perform differently than it does?"

I think that if researched it would be found that buried in the data
of the slit experiment is an assumption that light exists and follows
consistent laws independently of any human experience. If so, the
MOQ would say that although in the past this seems to have been the
highest quality assumption one can make about light, there may be a
higher quality one that contradicts it. This is pretty much what the
physicists are saying but the MOQ provides a sound metaphysical
structure within which they can say it.

DG:
This seems to directly relate to my comments concerning your
annotation on page 2 and your response to the mind-matter question
in Lila: "So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all
schools are right on the mind-matter question."

RMP:
As said in Note 101, "Within their limitations. They seem to fit
within the Hindu parable of the blind men and the elephant."

DG:
Do you mean that you now believe philosophic idealism to be a
higher quality intellectual pattern of value than materialism? If so,
does the quote here still hold true but only in limited contexts? For it
seems in rejecting materialism, ".the measuring instruments would
just be measuring their own internal characteristics." ( SODV paper)

RMP:
I think idealism is of higher quality for understanding the MOQ
because most people understand materialism as "common sense" but
few understand idealism as "common sense," and you need both.
Although Dynamic Quality is neither an object nor an idea, I have
always felt that someone who understands idealism will figure out the
MOQ much faster than someone who only understands materialism
will.

DG:
You mention philosophic idealism in Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance during your refutation of scientific
materialism (Chapter 19) but you reject it as "too far fetched." Do you
feel that's why so few people understand it?

RMP:
It seems outside "common sense," so most people don't believe it.
But I believe it was the dominant school of philosophical thought in
England during the Victorian period.

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of
skutvik at online.no
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 4:33 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Empirical and Historical

Hi Ham

Thanks for your ability to extract "essences". This really goes to the
kernel of it ALL. Your editing was good, I just try to keep your
comments apart from the previous line of thought.

22 July Ham wrote: 
> I would like to offer some suggestions concerning the confusion that
> has appeared in recent posts.  Hopefully they will be seen as
> constructive rather than derisive.

    On 7/11 Ron said: 
    The idea of anything coming before experience is, in fact, an
    idea. The experiences you are experiencing right now,
    understanding and describing it is conceptualizing it, remembering
    it, is conceptualizing it. Therefore it is more empirical than
    sensory empiricism, because it is the now of experience not any
    conception of it. Quality, experience, is reality.  

    This prompted Craig to ask:
    So the idea of experience comes before experience?  

    On 7/15 Platt asked:
    Or is paradox our lot in life when it comes to thinking about
    reality?  

    To which Bodvar responded:
    I don't see it as paradoxical unless we regard intellect in its
    SOM role as shuffling around of ideas in our mind. It's MOQ role
    is the value of the subject/object (mind/matter) DISTINCTION or
    AGGREGATE.  

    Which led to further speculation by Platt:
    Maybe there are two MOQ's. 1) the mystic MOQ of direct 
    experience, 2) the idea MOQ consisting of DQ/SQ with a 
    hierarchy of static patterns.  
    MOQ 1 is monism, without pattern, consisting solely of value. MOQ
    2 is dualism, patterned, consisting of many ideas.  

> The only thing that is clear here is that trying to build a cogent
> thesis out of confused terminology is exasperating.  Since most of
> you have also contributed to the thread on Reductionism, my
> suggestion is that you apply a little reductionism to this empirical
> mess.

As seen Ron's "experience as coming before ideas" was promptly shot
down by Craig. From this arch-somish point of view one quickly ends 
in
the "idea black hole" and I'm sorry that ZAMM' great insight of
(IDEA/REALITY [mind/matter or subject/object] being a static fall-out
of the DQ/SQ constellation) being muddled up by LILA and completely
destroyed by "Lila's Child" where the slippery slope of "ideas
creating objects... etc" began. 

The point is : A metaphysics which set out to do away with the 
Subject/Object distinction as existence's ground (making it a subset
of itself) can't enter it again as metaphysically valid in the form of
ideas (mind patterns) without wrecking itself. Look to this
"Annotation 102"

    I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV paper 
    that the key to integrating the MOQ with science is through 
    philosophic idealism which says that objects grow out of ideas,
    not the other way around

Philosophical idealism??! Materialism versus idealism, SOM's two
mutually excluding aspects, and then picking one of these as if closer
to the MOQ!!!! I didn't believe my eyes the first time I read this.
The annotation goes on

    Except in the case of DQ what is observed always involves an
    interaction with ideas that have been previously assumed .. etc

With these new premises, what keeps DQ out of the idea vortex? 
Nothing at all. ZAMM had nothing about ideas as creating objects (this
was correctly relegated to SOM's idealism) after its "in-out" turn of
the metaphysical sock which made the subjective ideas/objective 
world
distinction part of MOQ's "static" repertoire. 

This goes for SOM's view of language ("concepts") as a subjective
reflection of reality. It's child's play to prove that everything is
language from its premises, and an efforts to construct a Quality
versus concepts is impossible without being smack back in SOM.   

                                   -------------------

Sorry for not commenting the rest Ham, but I feel that you belong in
the idealist camp by your "everything corollaries of human
sensibility". From SOM this of everything being mind patterns (ideas)
is so plain that's it's not worth discussing, but as plain is it that
SOM can't get rid of the material world, Calling it "mind too" does
not help one iota. This and the rest of SOM's paradoxes is what the
MOQ does away with, but then it must be understood . 

Just call me Bo even if I sign my full name, it's become my MD 
identity.

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