[MD] A realist MOQ, no SOM required!!!!!!!!!

[David Morey]

Hi DMB, Ian and all

"The MOQ does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality as 
composed of material substance and independent of us.  It says it is an 
extremely high quality idea.  We should follow it whenever it is practical 
to do so.  But the MOQ, like philosophic idealism, says this scientific view 
of reality is still an idea.  If it were not an idea, then that 'independent 
scientific material reality' would not be able to change as new scientific 
discoveries come in." [LILA'S CHILD, Annotation 4]

DM replies: Yes, MOQ is compatible with realism, and yes all ideas even 
scientific ones are ideas, but agreeing with that does not make MOQ a form 
of idealism, hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with this, idealist or not, 
I also agree that realism and seeing ideas as ideas should still allow us to 
question the metaphysics of SOM and materialism. So my suggestions agree 
with the above, no problem.


"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!" [LILA'S CHILD, 
Annotation 67]


DM replies: So quality, DQ and SQ, come before ideas, both are 
pre-conceptual, I agree with that, it is what we find in experience and 
allows us to get our ontology and realism going in the MOQ. I am not a 
materialist or physicalist, at least not unless you see matter as just a 
word for a certain set of patterns and is open to a lot of debate about what 
sort of qualities those experienced patterns exhibit. Yes experience and 
ideas are primary and when we talk about what these ideas refer to, such as 
matter, then we are talking about features of patterns that we have derived 
from experience and our ideas about this experience. But there is also a 
historical and cosmological and evolutionary  story to be told about our 
ideas about these experienced patterns and how these patterns clearly exist 
independently of us in these stories. Obviously DQ and SQ are our first 
ideas in a sense, but we give them ontological status, derived from our 
direct experience, referring to what we find in experience when we first 
conceptualise our experience, replacing the misguided first concepts of SOM.

"It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although 
'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature came first, actually 'common 
sense' which is a set of ideas, has to come first.  This 'common sense' is 
arrived at through a huge web of socially approved evaluations of various 
alternatives.  The key term here is "evaluation," i.e., quality decisions. 
The fundamental reality is not the common sense or the objects and laws 
approved of by common sense but the approval itself and the quality that 
leads to it." [LILA'S CHILD, Annotation 97]

DM replies: Yes we have to think about how to understand experience before 
we can produce ideas about a world and cosmos, experience and ideas come 
first, then we get to cosmology and evolution which then refers to times and 
places that go beyond what we have directly experienced, in a sense the MOQ 
is obvious and simple, and only SOM, confusingly talks as if you can tell 
the story of cosmology and evolution without understanding where your 
experience and metaphysics is getting started from in the first place. So no 
disagreement between what I am saying and any of the above.


Ian said to dmb:
(1) DavidM is warning against the rejection of realism BECAUSE you accused 
him by name (in a thread not actually involving him) of "arguing in favor of 
subjects experiencing objective reality". Simply clarifying that it's the 
primacy of subjects and objects we're (ALL) rejecting - NOT reality.


dmb says:
Right, I named several people who all seem to be making the same mistake, 
which is nothing less than a failure to understand the rejection of SOM. If 
you've been following along, then you should know that Arlo and I have both 
tried to show that David M is using the MOQ's terms but he's really just 
talking about SOM. That's what this realism business is really all about. As 
he and many others misconstrue it, "static patterns" are just a new name for 
SOM's independent, objective reality. I'm still quite convinced that this 
basic first move is where most people fall down.

DM replies: Utter nonsense, the only real difference DMB seems to stick with 
is that he thinks all SQ involves concepts and I say that we experience SQ 
without introducing concepts straight away, simply pre-conceptual SQ. If DMB 
thinks SQ and patterns are impossible without concepts he has done nothing 
to give any good reasons for this view, it seems to be a dogmatic assertion 
of his. I suggest shapes and colours are called pre-conceptual SQ, DMB 
either thinks that shapes and colours should be called DQ or that shapes and 
colours involve concepts. Either way this is an odd use of the word concepts 
or fails to see the patterns in shapes and colours. Shapes and colours DMB 
are you ever going to discuss how you understand these?


Ian said to dmb:
We're (ALL) arguing for a MoQish REALITY - and thereby rejecting the dangers 
of a post-modern, solipsistic, subjective idealism.

DM replies: Is DMB rejecting postmodern non-realism and solipsism and 
subjective idealism? Pleased to hear he is if you think so. DMB can you 
confirm your rejection? Doubt it.

dmb says:
It's not about loyalty or fondness, Ian. It's about comprehension. As far as 
the dangers of postmodern, solipsistic, subjective idealism go, like I just 
said, "I do not think that, did not say that, and I don't see how that could 
follow from anything I said".

DM replies: Bit vague, do you reject solipsism, non-realism and 
anthropocentrism? 3 yes/no answers would be good to see.

DMB: Those concerns are baseless, are the product of some wild inferences by 
David Morey based on his own misunderstanding.


DM replies: Please list these 'wild' inferences, or are you just back 
tracking as usual?

DMB: He shows this with his contradictory phrase "pre-conceptual pattens",


DM: We see colours without concepts I suggest, how is that a contradiction 
please explain, sure it contradicts your dogmatism that all patters and SQ 
requires concepts.
I say we see differentiated colours, shapes, smells, sounds, without 
concepts, did we not experience any of our differentiated senses prior to 
language and concepts?
Do you think we had concepts prior to language? Please clarify if you can 
make any sense of your own thoughts?

DMB: for example. He's attempted to construe static patterns as if they were 
pre-existing independent realities#

DM replies:  This endless misrepresentation is either complete 
misunderstanding or complete fear that you cannot justify your views. I 
suggest we experience pre-conceptual patters/SQ as the very being of our 
experience, the only primary being we know, I then suggest that we can have 
good ideas and concepts to enable us to understand this 
pre-conceptual-experienced (one-word) SQ. One of the many good ideas we can 
have is that realism is right, that my mother existed before I was born, 
that species existed before human beings, that the cosmos existed before 
this planet, that America exists even though I have never been there, that 
my cake still exists even when I put it in the cake tin.


DMB: which we may or may not then perceive and conceptualize. This mistake 
doesn't take the MOQ on board at all. There is no real conceptual shift away 
from SOM but just a re-naming the same old objective realities from SOM. The 
problematic metaphysical assumptions remain unchanged.

DMreplies : Apparently if you can't argue against what I am actually saying 
you think defeating something you have dreamed up will do!

dmb says:
What!? You don't see how those quotes are relevant to David Morey's love of 
realism and pre-existing realities?


DM replies : So you still reject realism, unlike the MOQ or Pirsig, and you 
can't understand that the idea of a dinosaur (which we have never 
experienced but have reasoned based on fossils) refers to an actual dinosaur 
that pre-existed human beings in history? Creationist are you? Can't make 
any other sense of your view. Can you explain it?

DMB: Wow. I think they answer his concerns quite directly and neatly.

DM replies: No that just support what I am saying. What you are saying is a 
sort of half story that keeps going round in circles. So what came first in 
time actual dinosaurs or humans? I say humans what do you say? What came 
first human beings doing natural history or the idea of dinosaurs? Obviously 
we had no idea about dinosaurs prior to doing natural history, there are not 
many dinosaurs in the bible. Can you follow this difference between ideas 
and actual existence, you seem to want to pretend there is no distinction, 
why? What pointless form of non-realism are you trying to defend. Feel free 
to back track, it is one of the better ways you have of responding.

DMB: Pirsig even tells us that getting this very point, "is important for an 
understanding of the MOQ"!

DM replies: Yes ideas are prior to the actually existing patterns we refer 
to and that exist independently of us according to our actual ideas, we can 
do all this without introducing the metaphysical theories that invent 
subjects and objects, as patterns are quality, patterns exist, experience is 
made of patterns and DQ, and these exist. MOQ easily can  embrace realism 
and can reject S-O metaphysics at the same time, great job done, DMB can 
stop suggesting that realism destroys the MOQ, he never really meant to say 
such a crazy thing in the first place. Or am I misrepresenting you? If so, 
please explain.

DMB: This is exactly what I'm trying to get DMorey (and you) to see: "that 
although 'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature came first 
(pre-existing objective reality), actually 'common sense' which is a set of 
ideas, has to come first." Like I said, it's about comprehension and some 
people just don't get it. All three of the quotes make the same point. It's 
a good and useful idea in many situations, but don't reify it. Don't forget 
that it's just an idea. Don't mistake for the starting point of reality or 
the anchor of all truths, or whatever. The idea was, after all, derived from 
experience in the first.

DM replies : Yes culture comes before the patterns/SQ that culture 
conceptualises and refers to, but in actual time, as per fossil dating, and 
cosmic background radiation, patterns we call suns and planets are older and 
therefore existed in the past before human beings existed, in the context of 
a very good idea called realism. Any reason why MOQ cannot embrace realism 
as a good idea? Not that I can see. What underlies these patterns that show 
up in our experience, that we can deduce pre-existed our experience and even 
our species existence? We cannot say, all we have are the patterns we 
experience, coming and going in an ocean of DQ. What sort of nature do we 
have? Are we subjective entities? No why would we think that, all we are is 
the experience of SQ and DQ. What sense can we make of the cosmos that 
exists beyond our experience and our species existence? Well we can 
experience SQ and DQ and amazingly we can make sense of this wider cosmos in 
terms of just SQ and DQ and we can do this in realist terms about the 
ontological status of SQ and DQ and we do not have to reject realism when we 
do this.

No SOM is required!!!!!

Over to to you DMB, to drone on about how only your version of the MOQ truly 
rejects SOM because only you truly reject SOM by rejecting realism, and only 
you really understand the MOQ, and that everyone else can't follow what you 
are saying, and therefore the true inexplicable MOQ is doomed to die because 
no one can understands it, which is a shame and perhaps maybe more people 
should try my realist version because more people than just DMB can probably 
understand it... wonder why that is? And I have no desire to save you by the 
way, but would appreciate it if you stopped misrepresenting my views...  And 
I do not think that I have perfected the MOQ, I simply offer an alternative 
to DMB's non-realist, no pre-conceptual SQ version. If DMB has any good 
reason for preferring his version to mine I have yet to hear them. Why is 
non-realism better than realism? Why does pre-conceptual-experienced-SQ have 
to be banned from the MOQ? What status do experienced shapes and colours 
have in the MOQ with no pre-conceptual patterns? I am all ears? If you had 
some good reasons I would be more than happy to change my mind, I have no 
attachment to my views other than that they make more sense of experience 
than I can find in your views. You seem to be defending your views as if you 
have some sort of emotional attachment to them, perhaps you can explain why 
you value these ideas? I value recognising that dinosaurs existed in history 
before human beings, you seem unhappy about this, why? I value accepting 
shapes and colours as existing for babies, animals and me prior to concepts 
being built on these, what makes you frightened by this idea? I think my 
cake continues to exist when it is put back into the cake tin, do you have a 
fear of dark interiors, or what is it that is really bothering you? I can 
see you care about this, but what are the SOM linked problems that either 
realism or pre-conceptual SQ create? I can't see any? If you can actually 
put up some good arguments for your views instead of attacking ones I don;t 
even hold you might actually convince me. Get real, to coin an appropriate 
phrase!