[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[Alexander Jarnroth]

I replay in the same way.


[from the discussion between Alexander and Tim]

[A] 
> REPLAY: I said in another discussion that I think that there is an 
> "absolute reality" (ab-solut - "from out of the solution") but I don't 
> think that you can "abstract" (abs-trahere "pull out from") an 
> "ultimate concept"
> ("final
> offspring") from perception (in-collection). But my idea is that our 
> perception in itself must be a part of reality, it can't in itself be 
> fundamentally different from the rest of reality. But we do live only 
> in the world of our perceptions and concepts - and not really in 
> what's outside.

[Tim]

alright!  we agree that there is an absolute reality.  (Thanks for sharing
your knowledge on words too, I think this will be helpful to me just below.
also, I think I have nearly settled on "informs" - from earlier - and I
consider it a great addition to my understanding: thank
you)

about extracting a final concept, I think we could get into this.  I
certainly don't know if you can either. Why don't you think so?  What do you
think of the foundations of math (i.e.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics)?  Does math even
ultimately require perception?

I have to think about your language regarding perception-reality.  But, why
not something like I and not-I simultaneously bound (not-I contains me but I
don't, at least I don't think so, contain it) and inform each other?
 
[Alexander's Reply]

What Russell did, was trying to prove arithmetic within the framework of
formal logic. But formal logic is a Boolean algebra, which is just a
particular kind of abstract algebra. In that case, formal logic is just a
particular case among the set of abstract algebras (Ockham's razor at work).
But now set theory is also just an abstract algebra. All of these concepts
have axioms which can't be verified empirically. That is, they are just
stated in the way "if we say this, then what if we can deduce statements in
this way and that". So there is no ultimate fundaments there - just
assumptions.

***

[A]
> 
> REPLAY: But one of the fundamentals of thinking is the mapping of 
> mental ideas onto reality. All construction is such a map. You HAVE to do
that.
> Life has changed this planet a lot of times. Living beings for example 
> produced so much oxygen that all free iron atoms were oxidized and 
> later filled also the atmosphere with oxygen. And every action leads 
> to an reaction - so everything is interaction. You can't be just 
> observing without changing.

[T]
I was having this discussion with Mark yesterday about: what is
intelligence?  Ab-solut, being out of the solution...  Can we say, at least
tentatively, that within the MoQ (or even generally) intelligence is the
ability to mentally map, correctly, to absolute reality?
 
[Alexander's Reply]

Some kind of patters in a structure should be left invariant by the mapping
for the mapping to meaningful. And you have to decide on some kind of
function. You could call it a kind of "systematic correspondence". The map
help you to deduce statements concerning something in perception - but it
will never tell you what was left out - that is, what became "variant". Most
of things are left out by perception itself. So "correctness" does only
exist within a concept of interpretation.

***

[A]
> REPLAY: most concerning the distinction of SQ and DQ.

[T]
But, just to be sure, isn't SQ 'merely' part of a mental map?  It has
something to do with stuff further back on the train.  the presence of it is
something that not-I, or at least some intelligent part thereof (you for
instance), might be able to infer from our dynamic entanglement...  by
'merely' I guess I mean to say that I make my mental map absolutely real,
but only I have access to it directly --- or else it wouldn't be 'mine'.

so you know, this is where I read to before I started my reply.

[Alexander's Reply]

Well, I think that most of what is included in the "conscious experience" is
static intellectual patterns. But not all together. When you fall down,
after jumping up - this is a physical pattern. It is deduced by you balance
organ, which is specialized to measure just that. When you lift up a stone,
the muscles feed back information about how much they work, to the brain,
and this gives you a sense of weight. That is also a physical pattern. When
you feel hungry, that's a biological pattern - and the "staticness" of
hunger could be the want for some particular kind of food. You would like to
have egg, for instance and not sauerkraut.
When you feel "shame" for something you have done, then that's a social
pattern and so on.
So you do directly perceive other patterns than intellectual (which should
come as no surprise, as quality was attached to experience -> all patterns
should be part of experience).

***
 

[A]
> Not about reality. I prefer talking about "correct statements"
> within some context f thought, where you have a specified "evaluation"
> function. Then "truth" is just a value, as in formal logic. But this 
> kind of "truth" is to quite a large extent relative, then.

[T]
I'm not with you here.  I might not be able to create a duplicate absolute
reality with my words; They perhaps miss the mark, or are not precise
enough, but reality we agree is absolute.  truth is absolute
too: the only thing is that what I offer as my attempt at truth won't be
perfect.  But isn't this to protect the absolute truth from corruption; to
protect the continued existence of absolute reality.  Just like my mental
map, MINE, is protected from corruption, it is reserved for me, might there
just need to be a minute divide from absolute reality to protect it?  Hmmm,
maybe we are saying close to the same thing, but only that in we differ
where you say 'to quite a large extent' I would say 'to within an absolute
minimal extent' - maybe along the lines of some sort of uncertainty
principle.

[Alexander's Reply]

A memory is, in itself, an abstraction. When you shall relate what someone
has said, from memory, you don't remember every word exactly, after some
time, just the "meaning" but this meaning is, of course, your
interpretation. But telling that would be "telling the truth" of your memory
- but that is perhaps not the truth concerning what the other person
originally meant to say.
In formal logic, you deduce the truth of a statement from the relations and
the parts of the statement. "P->Q", is true whenever Q is true, regardless
the value of P, for instance. This interpretation is termed "correct" within
the frames of formal logic.
Perhaps that's what you, and Mark too, have missed concerning the maps. To
be able to attach a value to the figure of a map, you must first decide a
scale and a measure, which assigns values to the figure. And here is the
inadequacy of this approach: it doesn't tell you how to assign values or why
some particular values were assigned.

*** 

[A]
> Negentropy is a measure of a lot of things, information, 
> improbability, degree of freedom and so on.

[T]
entropy is merely counting the number of ways of arranging the system (and
weighing them by their energies)... and then the function ln Z.
I'll leave the reference below.

> *the wikipedia page on negentropy:
> *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy
> *gives the equation: Negentropy ~ (-1)*ln Z, where Z is the partition 
> function, and the -1 is the 'neg'
> *and the wikipedia page for Z:
> *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_function_%28statistical_mechan
> ics%29 *In the section: Meaning and significance
> *states: "Hence if all states are equally probable (equal energies) 
> the partition function is the total number of possible states."
> 

[Alexander's Reply]

No, it depends on the context. Negentropy, concerning energy, is defined as
its ability to perform work, that is the degree of freedom. Concerning
thermal energy (kinetic energy of atoms and molecules), the degree of
freedom becomes statistical mechanics. To find all molecules of the air in a
room, in one half of the room is very improbable, for instance, which make
it a low entropy state. Maxwell's Demon would have to measure the momentum
of all the molecules to be able to sort them - which costs energy - and this
gives the information measure.

***

>[T] *But are you postulating 'survival' as the first principle?  Are 
>you  subordinating quality to it?  Or are we just pulling principles 
>for a  highly  developed state out of our experience in the muddle?
> 
> REPLAY: I said above that if a system doesn't preserve itself, it 
> cease to exist. Thus it "confines".

I think that you are interchanging the use of 'confine' and 'inform'
here.  I understand that death takes with it what is above, and in that
sense would put an absolute strangle hold on the above, but still, unless
intellect can arrive at it intellectually it is not intellect that is
informing the lower, but the lower that is informing the intellect.

[Alexander's Replay]

But you should understand "inform" here as "organize" or "give form to". A
society organized by just social convention would have quite different from
a society governed by laws (=intellectual patterns), for instance.
>From the Webster's definitions of "inform" these aspects are the most
important:

1 (obsolete): to give material form to 
2a : to give character or essence to <the principles which inform modern
teaching> b : to be the characteristic quality of : animate <the compassion
that informs her work>

***

> *And so you are saying here that the social level is to 'inform' the 
> intellectual level.  You are putting the social above both biological 
> and intellectual.  And you are, seemingly, suggesting that survival is 
> the judge of the social.  This is not the MoQ.
> 
> REPLAY: No, intellect informs society by changing society. Intellect 
> is, ultimately, just confined by society, because it would hardly have 
> the time to develop any "higher" ideas or ideals without the support 
> of society.

Perhaps there is a good intellectual reason to have the intellect inform
society that it must survive - or that even a few individual must survive in
lean times, but it doesn't seem like we have mapped any intellectual
absolute as to why any particular society must go on. 
Societies of all sorts of animals, humans included, go extinct all the time.
Intellectually, this seems okay.  That's all i'm saying.  if it is the
intellect doing the informing, it seems to be saying that reality is happy
that you are here now, but if conditions should change such that you won't
be, that might be quite okay too.  we all, each of us, will die.  The
intellects hasn't informed me differently.

[Alexander's Reply]

Let's just put it this way: if society didn't work to preserve itself it
wouldn't exists - just like biological patterns.

***

> REPLAY: Again: Intellect shouldn't destroy society, because it is 
> dependent on it, but it should try to re-form society - constantly. A 
> society going static won't last long.

I think phaedrus might have said something like: if the intellect decides
against the society, it is absolutely morally right to do what it will,
including destroying the society, for its own purposes.  The destruction of
the society does not imply the destruction of the biological individuals
thereof.  And the destruction of the society does not mean that a new, with
a great deal of similarities (re-formed) might not immediately pop up in its
stead.

[Alexander's Reply]

Intellect can destroy society without destroying it, in the sense that you
could imagine the destruction of it, without actually acting to destroy it.
If you shut off society today, for instance, some tree billion people living
in urban areas would die within a year. The civil wars, and other wars,
which would breake out would probably kill at least another billion. So most
people wouldn't find it being in their interest to die. An intellectual
pattern which leads to the destruction of the body of the intellect, is
self-destructing, just like will to suicide. Of course you could term it
right in some sense, but I'm not sure that I would call a self-destruction
intellectual pattern "high quality" - I would place it rather low - it is a
will to change, but the change it starts is just the destruction of the idea
itself.

***

[Alexander on the last part]

I came to think about one way to put intellectual supremacy clearly. Rule by
law again.
Rule by law, instead of social convention, makes it clearer what society
wants and what it does not. Categorical law is even higher intellectual
quality. If the law is inconsistent with itself, then it could happen that
you have no choice but breaking it. That would, indeed, be "low quality" at
an intellectual lever. And it would also be low quality if you wouldn't be
able to deduce if a particular act would break the law or not.

/A