[MD] SOM & the MOQ's four levels as real

[David Morey]

dmb says:
Yea, I think you guys are getting at the source of much confusion. Arlo is 
quite rightly identified the essential problem with SOM, a pre-existing 
reality (to which our true concepts must correspond).

DM: Just to be clear, just because I propose that we accept realism, that 
the SQ/patterns that we experience clearly are able to exist when we are not 
experiencing them, it does not mean
that I think we can say anything about how or why patterns have some form of 
enduring life. SOM clearly in part develops its dualism to explain this 
realist point, but it proves to be a bad move. It is much better to stick 
with just the ontology of MOQ: SQ and DQ. Now clearly we use concepts to 
divide our experiences in certain SQ ways, and to makes sense of experience, 
that is basic MOQ. There is no reason to think that we can say anything 
metaphysical about what is going on with patterns and DQ when we are not 
experiencing them. MOQ suggests we base our ontology on the only thing we 
have, i.e. experience, and I strongly support this suggestion. That is why I 
reject physicalism, scientism,  materialism,  essentialism, etc. But I do 
not see that this implies any reason to reject realism, realism about SQ and 
DQ, which I have always taken to be the basis of the MOQ. For the MOQ to 
embrace non-realism as well as rejecting the core of SOM, seems to me a step 
to far, and a step into bad philosophy. I also reject a correspondence 
theory of truth and take a more pragmatic approach. All we have is 
experience, DQ and SQ, and the conceptual analysis of SQ to make as much 
sense as we call about our experience. But I see this experience as 
difficult to make sense of, SQ comes and goes, our experience is limited and 
finite and realism is one of the ways to make better sense of our 
experience. What takes place, what happens in the cosmos, when we do not 
experience it directly is highly mysterious, but that a more than human 
cosmos exists and can exist without us is a good idea if we want to make 
sense of the limitations of our experience. What can science tell us, how 
far can it go? Quite far but not that far. We can measure and quantify 
patterns and their interactions and their rate of change, but we should 
avoid scientism and be quite clear that we cannot say much if anything about 
forces and causes and substances or what determines what. We have 
SQ/patterns they come and go, we have to rely on them for our lives, that 
food sustains us, that the ground will not disappear, etc, but we know 
nothing with certainty, if anything the ocean of flux and DQ is all too 
clear, there may be patterns but there are no laws we can rely on (See 
Smolin's new book), no substances or absolutes to rule over us, rather a 
great openness of possibilities, endless shaping and reshaping of SQ. I do 
not think our views of reality really differ very much, but for me reality 
is real, and what we experience we can recognise, and what we can imagine 
yet never experience is ours too (the big bang, dinosaurs, life on other 
planets, etc), thanks to our reason and imagination. If you reject realism 
due to a fear of SOM you are rejecting the one small idea associated with 
SOM that is a good one. If you embrace non-realism you are rejecting human 
imagination and its power to break out of the confines of our limited 
experience, you are rejecting the achievements of human culture. And where 
di solipsism come from originally? Is it not derived from SOM, from falsely 
thinking that we are trapped in the experiencing subject? Is not a 
solipsistic MOQ not an MOQ that is attacking SOM only to fall into one half 
of SOM the subjective half of the SOM dualism? A more powerful MOQ rejects 
SOM dualism, I suggest, whilst realising that all we have is the reality of 
experience, but we find in our experience real patterns, that persist, 
subsist, exist for themselves within experience, and which are the world 
that we are making the best sense of we can.