[MD] Metaphysics and the mystic.

[118]

Hi Joe,
As far as I can tell, there are two ways to describe this question.
The first is "how do we KNOW?"  This can perhaps be approached from
the structural, material point of view.  In this we can trace nerve
activity and surmise that knowing involves the chemistry of the brain
is some way.  People have mixed in electromagnetic theory, and the
temporary appearance of neural patterns which light up.  When the
brain is dead, it appears as if the person does not "know" in such a
case.  Although this is far from settled.  This knowing can be
considered as a "pattern" which is a popular word in this forum, and
may be the MoQ answer.  A hurricane is a pattern, while it is blowing
the hurricane is present.  Things that we do not know do not have a
wind associated with them, but such a storm can always arise, under
the right conditions.

The second view delivered by the question is: "how do WE know/".  This
is, in my view, a more interesting  question. This is perhaps the more
perennial question that you alude to.  That is, why do we as
individuals view the world through the particular bodies which we
have?  What is it that makes this particular body mine?  This form of
knowing is difficult to imagine in a logical sense.  It implies that
each individual's existence has a spark from somewhere else, since
there is no place this Self can exist.  Questioning this Self in a
rigorous fashion gives the impression that the Self does not exist.
Of course this is nonsense since we know we exist.  Unless you want to
play around with the word "existence" to make it meaningless.  You
cannot find a motorcycle by taking it apart and analyzing all of its
components, to see where exactly it is.  You cannot find the self for
the same reasons.  Yet, we know that a home exists.   We know that we
know; I Am, therefore I think.  We cannot know about such "knowing"
since it is the "knowing" that gives the knowing our identity.

My answer is: Who knows, but it is fun to contemplate.  Something
mysterious, outside of science and logic.  Perhaps spiritual
rationalism will give us a better answer.

Cheers,
Mark

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Joseph  Maurer <jhmau at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi Mark and All,,
>
> How do we know things? Has been a metaphysical question from the get-go.  I
> don't remember how Socrates dealt with that.  Plato proposed a world of
> ideas that we contact...Aristotle proposed that the mind abstracts the
> essence from the image of the thing in the imagination and gives the
> abstraction an intentional existence in the mind to manipulate as ideas.
> Voila! Knowledge!  Aquinas ran with that definition of abstraction.  This is
> how I remember the metaphysics I studied 65 years ago.
>
> On 1/29/12 12:25 PM, "118" <ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not sure what you mean by "intellectual abstraction".
>
>
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