[MD] Words and Metaphysical Mysticism.

[118]

Hi David,
Thanks for the simplification.

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 5:37 PM, David Harding <davidjharding at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Mark,
>
> Still our conversation to me seems to be going very chaotic very quickly.
>  I think we need to slow down somehow…  For now, let's focus on this quote
> of yours below which I think will bear the most fruit if we talk about it
> more..
>
> > Yes, of course, because the whole thing is the creation of static
> > quality.  We create these patterns with our bodies.  It is our way of
> > interpretation.  We create this idea of matter it does not exist
> > outside of our creation.  Matter is an idea, it is something that we
> > have created in our heads in response to that which we connect to, get
> > it?  That is why it is a ghost, get it?  First we have to create it,
> > then the idea of matter comes into existence, get it?  Sure we can say
> > that matter existed before ideas, but that is also an idea, get it?
> > We are talking about the Ghost of Reason here, get it?  What we call
> > “matter” could care less what we see it to be.  This does not mean
> > that we are creating trees as we walk through a forest, we are simply
> > naming view as trees with some synaptic pattern in our brains.  What
> > we experience is the nerve firing in our heads, and not the trees.  We
> > call this nerve firing “trees”.  These trees do not exist as such
> > until we create them.   They don’t exist as trees at all.
>
> Let me break this up and detail my response:
>
> > Yes, of course, because the whole thing is the creation of static
> > quality.  We create these patterns with our bodies.  It is our way of
> > interpretation.  We create this idea of matter it does not exist
> > outside of our creation.  Matter is an idea, it is something that we
> > have created in our heads in response to that which we connect to, get
> > it?  That is why it is a ghost, get it?  First we have to create it,
> > then the idea of matter comes into existence, get it?  Sure we can say
> > that matter existed before ideas, but that is also an idea, get it?
> > We are talking about the Ghost of Reason here, get it?  What we call
> > “matter” could care less what we see it to be.  This does not mean
> > that we are creating trees as we walk through a forest,
>
> I agree right up to this point.
>
> > we are simply
> > naming view as trees with some synaptic pattern in our brains.  What
> > we experience is the nerve firing in our heads, and not the trees.  We
> > call this nerve firing “trees”.  These trees do not exist as such
> > until we create them.   They don’t exist as trees at all.
>
> Is a nerve firing really what creates our experience of trees? Is a 'nerve
> firing in our heads' what creates the 'trees'?  Let me repost a quote here
> from Pirsig and go into this in more detail:
>
> "This is difficult to untangle. Bohr’s “observation” and the MOQ’s
> “quality event” are the same, but the contexts are different. The
> difference is rooted in the historic chickenand-egg controversy over
> whether matter came first and produces ideas, or ideas come first and
> produce what we know as matter. The MOQ says that Quality comes first,
> which produces ideas, which produce what we know as matter. The scientific
> community that has produced Complementarity, almost invariably presumes
> that matter comes first and produces ideas. However, as if to further the
> confusion, the MOQ says that the idea that matter comes first is a high
> quality idea! I think Bohr would say that philosophic idealism (i.e. ideas
> before matter) is a viable philosophy since complementarity allows multiple
> contradictory views to coexist."
>
> So, 'nerve's firing in our heads' is more 'matter'.   They are no more
> real than the trees we experience which cause those nerve's firing in our
> heads.  The MOQ says that where these ideas of 'trees' come from isn't
> random or just imaginary however.  The MOQ says that it is a *high quality*
> idea to think that the trees and nerve firings exist and that we give these
> trees and nerve firings names.  But what the MOQ reminds us is that really
> this is just an *idea*; like all other ideas which can be ranked based on
> how good they are.
>
> What do you think about this?  Is what we call 'trees' actually 'nerve
> firings', or are the 'trees', something else?
>

This is a very good question, and one that requires philosophy as opposed
to science.  There is no way to scientifically prove that the activity of
the brain is directly connected to our thoughts.  We have examples of why
we think this may be a valuable manner in which to construct such an idea.
 I won't go into these except to say that the visualization of brain
activity seems to "correlate" with certain thoughts that the subject is
experiencing.  This may or may not be causal, or be proof that such brain
activity is the actual thought.

And so, my example was for illustrative purposes, and I will not claim any
truth therein.  All of science is descriptive, that is its purpose.  In
order to approach this from a philosophical or even metaphysical point of
view, we must rely on analogy.  The science I present is just that.  That
is, our "understanding" of one discipline is applied to another discipline.
 The sum total is considered to be knowledge, which we create.  The
assumption is that we create this knowledge from something other than
knowledge itself.

Knowledge can be considered as a dead end (SQ), unless we apply this
knowledge to expand on our awareness.  This expansion is a dynamic process,
and comes before SQ, and can be considered to reside in what I term
"creativity".  Through simple subtraction, I call this process DQ.
 Abstract thinking, as that which is controlled by the intellectual level,
can be considered as one such process, and therefore falls into the realm
of DQ.  Please remember that just because I have put this to words, this
does not make such DQ into SQ.  Words are simply methods for communication.
 What is being communicated lies outside of words.  An analogy would be to
say that the musical instruments involved are not the symphony.  The
instruments are just a means to convey the symphony.

If we approach this from a philosophical point of view, we can draw
analogies.  We could say that there is a "similarity" between a fire and
the smoke it creates.  We find it useful to propose that such fire and
smoke are part of the same process.  This process is the combustion and
release of matter.  We are quite certain that we experience thoughts.  We
are pretty certain that drugs can affect these thoughts.  This implies that
the drugs are acting on something.  Reason leads us to envision that such
"affect" is a physical process.  Therefore much in the same way as equating
smoke with fire, we can equate thoughts with the physical.  This may or may
not be useful depending on the point somebody is trying to make.

What you point to is the Ghost of Reason, when you speak of ideas begetting
ideas.  I think that this may be a more fruitful discussion to bring
meaning to MOQ.  The Ghost of Reason is a powerful analogy within MOQ.  So,
before I start going on about it, perhaps you can give me your sense of
this Ghost of Reason, and what it means within your understanding of MOQ.
 Please keep in mind that Pirsig is very specific by saying "what we know
as matter".  He is pointing to idea, and matter as we create it through the
first step of creating experience.  Does the Ghost of Reason have any ties
to DQ, or does it exist as a bubble on its own?

Please remember that Bohr's observation, is a description, and cannot be
considered as true or even real.  This same observation can be dealt with
by many descriptions.  So let us not be fooled by science and its claims to
be providing Truth.  Science is simply ideas.

Finally, we cannot assign a causal correlation between ideas and that which
they are describing in a cause-effect manner.  Ideas are ideas, and what
they seek to describe are not ideas, but reality as we deal with it.  I
don't want us to get stuck with a brain in a vat argument.  It is important
to break free of the notion that all is idea, or idealism.  To not break
free simply results in a paradox, where Quality is idea and can not
therefore result in idea as a separate thing.  We need to explore beyond
the world as idea.

Ranking is useful, but not imperative to MOQ.

Cheers,
Mark

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