[MD] Schroedinger's paradox

[Krimel]

[John McConnell]
Erwin Schroedinger addresses a perplexing topic called "The Mystery of the
Sensual Qualities".  Here's how he poses it:
"[It is a] strange fact that all our knowledge about the world around us
rests entirely on immediate sense perception, while on the other hand this
knowledge fails to reveal the relations of the sense perceptions to the
outside world, so that in the picture or model we form of the outside world,
guided by our scientific discoveries, all sensual qualities are absent."
Thus, for example, for people with normal color vision, light with a
wavelength around 570 nm produces a perception of the color we call yellow.
But a superposition of light sources of other frequencies will produce an
identical perception.  Thus, the perception of yellow is correlated with a
physically described circumstance but not explained by it.  Schroedinger
gives several convincing examples. 

[Krimel]
Furthermore a static sensory stimuli can produce different and mutually
exclusive perceptions. Consider the work of M.C. Escher. Sensation emerges
from molecular biology. It is the bodily transduction of energies inside and
outside of a body. 
Perception is a synthesis of sensation, memory and emotion. Perception
renders cacophony into harmony. The shepherd guards his flock by selecting
signal from the noise of a thousand voices crying wolf. Perception is the
instantaneous point of intersection between biology and ideation. From it
emerges the "intellectual level." 

[John McConnell]
The MOQ has been effective in resolving a number of classical paradoxes,
dichotomies, and dualities.  But I can't see how to apply it effectively to
this one.  Any ideas?

[Krimel]
It succeeds because Pirsig concludes ZMM by identifying Quality with the
Tao. Taoism is not a Kantian exercise in gem cutting. It is the ongoing
parsing of the world into likelihoods. Whatever is passive is less likely to
change that whatever is active.  This is yin and yang; static and dynamic.
Binaries are not mutual exclusivities; they are probability distributions.  
The MoQ succeeds to the extent that it is in harmony with this. It has
greater difficulty when it is read as having solved SOM only to devolve into
a form of structuralism, or a stage theory. 

[dmb]:
The problem is predicated on the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics
and the correspondence theory of truth that goes so neatly with those
assumptions. The MOQ rejects those assumptions and it rejects the
correspondence theory of truth. In fact, anyone who subscribes to
pragmatism, which is a theory of truth, is by definition rejecting the
correspondence theory of truth and the metaphysical assumptions that go with
it.

[Krimel]
James does not reject the assumption that concepts must conform to
perception. He states quite clearly that concepts arise from and are subject
to percepts. 
Conception is digital. It is the dividing up and carving up the world. It is
rational. It is plodding
Perception is analog. It is flow resonating in a fractal web of relational
nodes. It is irrational. It is instant.
James doesn't reject the assumptions of correspondence theory. He  adds to
them that ideas must hang together. They must cohere. Truth is a network of
ideas resonating in harmony. Truth must ring true.

[dmb]
 For the pragmatist, even our sensory perceptions are theory laden, are
already attached to ideas and interpretations so that reality is never
simply given to the senses and there is no such thing as "objective"
reality, no such thing as a Kantian thing-in-itself. 

[Krimel]
All you are saying here is that we are creatures of habit. We think and act
in certain ways because nothing suggests that we should do otherwise and so
we don't. If something did, we would. We are at ease when every new bit of
data is easily assimilated. But new data can also shake the system; set off
alarms; demand a reevaluate and force accommodation. Ideas flourish and
perish; they adapt or die within and among us. 
We might disagree about what gives rise to our sense data, but to the extent
that two or more find mutual harmony in their shared accounts, objectivity
emerges. 

[dmb]
Instead, subjects and objects are concepts, not ontological categories.

[Krimel]
Ontological categories are also concepts. 
Concepts are digital approximations of analog flow, just as static quality
emerges in the wake of dynamic quality. The relation between percepts and
concepts is problematic because it involves translation and transduction;
encoding and decoding; losiness and compression. In this sense reality is
semiotic.