[MD] The MoQ agency problem

[Ham Priday]

Marsha --



> Greetings Ham,
>
> The self is bits and pieces of patterns of value and the interdependent
> energy associated with these patterns, and the energy in the immediate
> dynamic awareness.
>
> Do you like this explanation?

No.

You didn't really expect another answer, did you?

--Ham

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

> On Aug 2, 2010, at 12:18 AM, Ham Priday wrote:
>
>> MoQers All --
>>
>> A recent exchange between Krimel and DMB triggered my epistemology alarm.
>>
>> Krimel said:
>>> I don't think the cogito moves us anywhere near a subject or objects.
>>> I just used "subject" because the statement contains some "I"s.
>>> All it says is that I know that I exist in virtue of my thoughts.
>>> I cannot seriously doubt that I am having thoughts but that says
>>> buttkiss about what thoughts are, where they come from,
>>> what my relationship to them is or anything whatever about the "I"
>>> that is having them. Most of the "problems" associated with Descartes
>>> come from his own elaborations of the cogito and from the
>>> elaborations of his commentators.
>>
>> David said:
>>> Well, there is some truth to the idea that subsequent commentators
>>> gave shape to Descartes ideas. But it's also true that Descartes is the
>>> father of SOM. In fact the subjective side of SOM is what we'd call
>>> the Cartesian self.  For Renee the mind was an unextended substance
>>> and matter was extended substance and the connection between
>>> these two categories is THEE problem of Modern epistemology.
>>> Before Descartes the word "mind" was not used as a noun, was not
>>> conceived as a thing. It was just a verb, as in "mind your manners".
>>> William James's ESSAYS ON RADICAL EMPIRICISM begins
>>> with the essay titled "Does Consciousness Exist?". He answers in the
>>> negative. He says that consciousness is not a thing but rather a 
>>> function,
>>> a verb.. . .
>>> Nietzsche had said the same thing in his own pithy way. He said
>>> statements like "I think" are misleading insofar as the "I" is conceived
>>> as the thing that does the thinking. Compare that statement to
>>> statements like "it is raining". Do we imagine there actually is an "it"
>>> that does the raining?  No. The rain is all there is to raining.
>>> When thunder rolls there is no thunderer that performs the task.
>>
>> Maybe so, David.  But only the observing subject KNOWS it is raining and 
>> is aware that he is experiencing the storm.  Without that experience 
>> "thunder and rain" would never be known, either as a concept or as a 
>> reality.  So which do you believe to be primary in this example: the 
>> phenomenon "raining" or the subjective experience of it?
>>
>> Shortly before this, Bodvar was talking about levels as if they were 
>> conspiring to take over civilization:
>>> Then the intellectual - Logos - level that took leave from  the social -
>>> Mythos - parent level in the known Q fashion and started to debunk its
>>> parent by way of its rational, scientific means. . . .
>>> Intellect wants by all means to keep the MOQ an intellectual pattern
>>> as such safely inside its domain and you - intellect's henchmen - have
>>> already given us a show of its methods no less fierce than the social-
>>> intellect struggle which is waged on society's home turf - violence.
>>> The intellect vs MOQ will be with intellect's non-lethal weapons,
>>> but no less effective. . . .
>>> Anyway it's not the intellectual level that scoffs at biology,
>>> it is the social that wants to organize biology's proliferation,
>>> consummation ..etc., into socially approved institutions.
>>
>> Do you catch the drift here?  Subjects are no longer human beings who 
>> think and act for themselves; they are functions of inanimate "agencies" 
>> that compete with each other for world domination.  Is this where 
>> Pirsig's elimination of subjects and objects is leading us?  Have we 
>> totally dysfunctionalized the cognizant agent once thought to be the 
>> choice-maker of the universe?
>>
>> Perhaps it is high time to refresh our understanding of what an "agent" 
>> is.
>>
>> "Agency is a concept used in philosophy and sociology to refer to the 
>> capacity of an agent to act in a world.  In philosophy, the agency is 
>> considered as belonging to that agent even if that agent represents a 
>> fictitious character, or some other non-existent entity.
>>
>> "The capacity of a human to act as an agent is personal to that human, 
>> though considerations of the outcomes flowing from particular acts of 
>> human agency for us and others can then be thought to invest a moral 
>> component into a given situation wherein an agent has acted, and thus to 
>> involve moral agency.  If a situation is the consequence of human 
>> decision making, persons may be under a duty to apply value judgments to 
>> the consequences of their decisions, and held to be responsible for those 
>> decisions.  Human agency entitles the observer to ask should this have 
>> occurred? in a way that would be nonsensical in circumstances lacking 
>> human decisions-makers, for example, the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 
>> on Jupiter."        --[Wikipedia: Agent, in philosophy]
>>
>> If man is not the free agent of value, experiential existence is 
>> unaccounted for and cognitive life is meaningless.  I don't know about 
>> you folks, but I find it hard to believe that this is what MoQ's author 
>> had in mind.
>>
>> Respectfully submitted,
>> Ham