[MD] Reifying carrots

[MarshaV]

Hi again Mark,

I haven't read the full book yet, mostly just scanned it.  I also have 
another by B. Alan Wallace on the way called, 'The Taboo of Subjectivity: 
Towards a New Science of Consciousness.'  It also looks to offer some 
interesting insight.

Marsha



On Oct 9, 2010, at 12:46 PM, 118 wrote:

> 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 of 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 differs 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 even 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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