[MD] Keep on duckin'

[X Acto]

Hey Marsha,
You do realize that these quotes conflict with the assertion that reification IS 
conceptualization.

You may have won the battle but you lost the war in this regard.

just pointing that out.

-Ron





 


----- Original Message ----
From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 4:36:30 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Keep on duckin'


On May 28, 2011, at 11:38 AM, david buchanan wrote:

> dmb says:  
> Again, I'll remind you that you repeatedly cited an enthusiastic William James 
>fan to dispute William James. The quotes you post as evidence for your notion of 
>reification do not support that notion at all. 
>


Marsha:

Here's more...  


"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)












___


Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html