[MD] The resolution of the mind/matter platypus.

[skutvik at online.no]

All.

1 Nov. squonk wrote:

> I think this is stated explicitly in the `Subjects, Objects, Data
> and Values´ paper? The Mind/Matter position is in fact not resolved:
> it is completely undermined by the reduction of everything to Value.
> And Value is the answer to your 'gap' question by the way. Thus,
> social patterns and intellectual patterns are re-described as two
> distinct realms of values. Similarly, the inorganic and biological
> realms.

The MOQ certainly "undermines" SOM and solves the Mind/Matter 
paradox, but HOW???? LILA (page 157 onwards in my Bantam Press 
hardcover)

    Another huge one is the mind-matter puzzle. If the world 
    consists only of patterns of mind and patterns of matter, what 
    is the relationship between the two?  If you read the hundreds 
    of volumes of philosophy available on this matter you may 
    conclude that nobody knows-or at least knows well enough to 
    convince everybody else. There is the materialist school that 
    says reality is all matter, which creates mind. There is the 
    idealist school that says it is all mind, which creates matter.  
    There is the positivist school which says this argument could 
    go on forever; drop the subject. That would be nice if you 
    could, but unfortunately it is one of the most tormenting 
    problems of the physics to which positivism looks for guidance. 
    The torment occurs not because of anything discovered in the 
    laboratory. Data are data.  It is the intellectual framework with 
    which one deals with the data that is at fault. The fault is within 
    subject-object metaphysics itself.

This introduction to the Mind/Matter paradox is excellent. See he first 
says it's the INTELLECTUAL FRAMEWORK that is at fault and then 
that the fault is within SUBJECT/OBJECT METAPHYSICS ITSELF. 
Can it be plainer that he means that the 4th. level =SOM? Not unless 
one is hell bent on NOT accepting or admitting anything at all, not 
even hard evidence. LILA goes on

    A conventional subject-object metaphysics uses the same four 
    static patterns as the Metaphysics of Quality, dividing them into 
    two groups of two: inorganic-biological patterns called "matter," 
    and social-intellectual patterns called "mind."   

Well, not directly wrong, but a bit awkward. SOM doesn't really call 
living organisms "matter" or societies "mind", but we understand the 
idea: MOQ's 1st. and 2nd. levels are "tangible" and the 3rd. and 4th. 
are "intangible".

    But this division is the source of the problem. When a subject-
    object metaphysics regards matter and mind as eternally 
    separate and eternally unalike, it creates a platypus bigger 
    than the solar system. It has to make this fatal division 
    because it gives top position in its structure to subjects and 
    objects.  Everything has got to be object or subject, substance 
    or non-substance, because that's the primary division of the 
    universe.  Inorganic-biological patterns are composed of 
    "substance," and are therefore "objective." Social-intellectual 
    patterns are not composed of "substance" and are therefore 
    called "subjective."   

This is spot on. SOM postulates S/O to be "the primary division of the 
universe" and ends up with the mind/matter paradox. How does mind 
influence matter (my finger-bending example) and how does matter 
influence mind (the mind-altering drugs example) something which is 
done constantly, but is principally impossible  .

    So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all 
    schools are right on the mind-matter question.  Mind is 
    contained in static inorganic patterns.  Matter is contained in 
    static intellectual patterns.  Both mind and matter are 
    completely separate evolutionary levels of static patterns of 
    value, and as such are capable of each containing the other 
    without contradiction.

There MUST be something important hidden in "..mind is contained in 
static inorganic patterns. Matter is contained in static intellectual 
patterns ..etc." but it evades me. If anyone is sure about this please, 
no sarcasm.

    The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the 
    connecting links between these two levels of value patterns 
    have been disregarded. Two terms are missing: biology and 
    society.  Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic 
    nature.  They originate out of society, which originates out of 
    biology which originates out of inorganic nature. 

But this is horrible ".... The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist 
because the connecting links between these two levels of value 
patterns ..."  Ergo he regards inorganic value = SOM's "matter", and 
intellectual value = SOM's "mind" and that creates a Q variety of the 
same very same paradox. 

     And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is as 
    dominated by social patterns as social patterns are dominated 
    by biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated 
    by inorganic patterns. 

OK, what all people - anthropologists included - know is that objectivity 
isn't easily maintained, but SOM-steeped people does NOT know 
anything about social. biological and inorganic levels and patterns. 
This a helpless jumble of SOM and MOQ.   

    There is no direct scientific connection between mind and 
    matter. As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are 
    suspended in language."  Our intellectual description of nature 
    is always culturally derived. 

"Suspended in language" does NOT mean that language (only) 
conveys intellects patterns - that language IS intellect - it means that 
since symbol-manipulation communication emerged it has been used 
as the ultimate tool to convey complicated contexts. There is "body 
language", a grimace conveys pain, but if the doctor wants to know 
more detail he has to get it via language.     

    The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of 
    freeing itself from its parent social level, namely the church, 
    has tended to invent a myth of independence from the social 
    level for its own benefit. Science and reason, this myth goes, 
    come only from the objective world, never from the social 
    world.  The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with 
    no social mediation whatsoever.  It is easy to see the historic 
    reasons for this myth of independence.  Science might never 
    have survived without it.  But a close examination shows it isn't 
    so.     

Yes, this is true, but all this above has NOT explained the mind/matter 
paradox as in my finger-bending or in the mind/altering drug sense 
examples. Naturally because it can't be explained from this "inorg.+ 
org. = objective/socio.+ intell. = subject" system. Only the SOL does it, 
but too simply and elegantly to satisfy all you complication-theories-
addicted people.   

The rest of your post I have to return to, only this: 

Squonk:
> Now I have a problem here to be frank with you Bo: All this talk of
> values makes me feel uneasy. It makes me feel like one of the
> quacking Ducks from Orwell´s 1984 who have had their vocabulary
> deliberately reduced in order to control their thinking. Similarly
> with DQ and sq: Very often, phrases like, `X is a dynamic´ can be
> read, and this makes me uneasy also, because it becomes easy to trot
> out, `this is dynamic, that is dynamic, and the other is dynamic,´
> without actually saying anything meaningful. I think there is a real
> danger that anything can be described as dynamic, even if it is
> utter garbage, or an outright fake. So, to answer your question, as
> a good little moqer, the gap doesn´t exist, because all sq patterns
> are the same stuff, and they do what they do in response to DQ. Now,
> I like that, but I feel like a quacking Duck saying it.

I actually agree with you about the "dynamic" issue - "yelping" I call -  
but I have no problems with "all this talk of values" (a strange 
statement from a moqist) if it means the static levels. All SOM-
generated paradoxes are dissolved by this matrix, but that requires 
that the intellectual level is seen for what it really is, namely SOM (as 
Pirsig says in the opening of this posts) Then the mind/matter paradox 
is seen as created by intellect in its fallacious SOM role, while it as 
MOQ's 4th. level poses no problem 

Phew! A whole day spent at the computer. . .

Bodvar