[MD] Reifying carrots

[118]

Hi Marsha,

Thanks for that.  The subjective and objective delimitation.  The creation
of an object followed by our severing ties with it.  This is analogous to
the notion of Maya and Brahman as written in the Vedic texts.  An our
particular avatarian (if that is a word) presence, is Atman.

Such delimitation is at the crux of my current inquiry into values.  That
is, a description of that boundary, beyond stating that it exists.  Thus,
Buddhism and all those other questions.  Others on the forum have answered
this in their own way, but not yet to my personal meaningful understanding.


Still looking for clues.

Mark

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 10:18 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

>
> More on SOM being the basis of the way intellectual static patterns of
> value function:
>
>
>
> "Everything in the world that we conceive of and experience is related to
> the mind.  When that world is reified however, it appears to exist
> absolutely, in its own right; and this mental distortion may lead one to
> wonder how nature can be comprehensible to the human mind.  Einstein, who
> routed absolute space and time from the universe, still clung to an absolute
> ontology.  The centrist view presented here, which might be called
> _conceptual relativity_, fundamentally challenges the realist ontological
> assumptions underlying virtually all of Western science.  Theory, in the
> form of conceptual designation permeates our experience.  As theory is not
> purely determined by some intrinsic nature o reality, there is no one
> conceptual system that uniquely accounts for the myriad of natural
> phenomena.  Objects exist relative to the theory-laden consciousness that
> experiences them.
>
> "From a centrists perspective, ontological absolutism is based on the
> mental distortion known as reification.  Reification in science is quite
> similar to the same process in everyday life.  This stands to reason, since
> scientific inquiry itself bears so much in common with ordinary mental
> activity.  Einstein made the following distinction between the two:  "The
> scientific way of forming concepts differers from that which we use in our
> daily life, not basically, but merely in the more precise definition of
> concepts and conclusions; more painstaking and systematic choice of
> experimental material; and greater logical economy.
>
> "The process of reification, as we have noted previously, forms the basis
> for everyday realism, and it is present eve in young children.  According to
> the child psychologist Jean Piaget, a child first constructs a concept
> related to the world and then projects it out into the world.  The concept
> is externalized so that it appears to be a perceptually given object or
> property, independent of the subject's own mental activity.  As we can see
> from our own experience, the phenomena that we perceive in the external
> world appear to exist independently of our perceptions and conceptions.
>  Here is perhaps the most fundamental reason for believing in an objective
> universe independent of consciousness:  that is simply how the world
> appears.  But does the world in fact exist the way it appears, or is its
> mode of existence incongruous with its mode of appearance?
>
> "Everyday and scientific realism differ, however, in the types of things
> that are reified.  Where as the former chiefly reifies objects and
> properties that appear to our senses, the latter reifies the existence of
> noumenal entities that lie behind appearances.  Thus, subatomic particles,
> electromagnetic fields, and the zero-point energy of the vacuum are assumed
> to exist independently of the theories in which they are conceived.  That
> is, they really exist "out there" in the objective world, independent of
> human existence.
>
> "The tendency of reification among mathematicians is particularly
> interesting.  Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh comment in their book
> 'Descartes' Dream: The World According to Mathematics' that many modern
> mathematicians regard their discipline as a system of deductive structures
> in which deduction moves from axiom to conclusions, and the axioms are
> "simply playthings."  This attitude suggests a formalists view of
> mathematics one the Davis and Hersh assert is generally instilled into
> today's students.  Yet in a later chapter they claim that nearly all
> mathematicians hold  Platonist conception of mathematics nearly all the
> time.  This view asserts that mathematics exists independently of the world;
> it exists prior to and apart from the universe, and and it will go on even
> when the cosmos comes to an end.  Thus, the world of mathematics exists
> independently of the mathematician, whose job is to discover and record what
> is already there.  What is this telling us?  It would seem th
>  at most mathematicians, when they philosophize about mathematics, profess
> a formalist view, but the rest of the time (especially when they are
> actually doing mathematics) they revert to a realist stance.  This may well
> be true of many scientists as well.  The natural tendency of reification,
> which we have had since childhood, is extremely difficult to eradicate from
> our habits of thinking and perceiving."
>
>     (Wallace, B. Alan, 'Choosing Reality, : A Buddhist View of Physics and
> the Mind',2003,pp.120-123)
>
>
> ___
>
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