Note: There is a difference between the validity of objective evidence - the continuum of "technology" from Homo habilis, reaching for a bone and rearranging its matter by carving, to the rearrangement of silicon, etc on a computer chip - and the ATTACHMENT to that cognitive ability, or an attachment to the products of that attachment, namely, the rearranged matter. These are two entirely different kettle of fish. Scientific-derived knowledge is valid for its purposes as a discipline; the exclusive attachment to it by the individual mind is irrational.
When I go deeply into the music and the force of my thinking fades as I let go of my habit of objectifying things I want to see and manipulate, in that state absent objectfying cognition, have I ceased perceiving? Is a perception absent objectifying valid?
An objectivist always believes that when you challenge the validity of an ATTACHMENT to scientific objectivism that you are attacking the validity of scientific knowledge itself and in its entirety. What I am challeging is peoples' minds' attachment to scientific knowlege as exclusive knowledge, its partiality, not its validity in whole. It gives great knowledege about matter, but the listening to stereo is not just about equipment, or producing a stereo soundfield populated with detailed sound sources that "look" like things, but about the mind's ability to seep deeper into the music by transcending the attachment to objectifying sound into a thing. This deepening - and I challenge any objectivist - is characterized by the "letting go" of the attachment to thinking, namely, objective thinking.
Viggens response reveals an interesting bias.
Whenever you say something about the limitations of objective knowledge, those ATTACHED to scientific materialist assumptions claim that you are saying that objective knowledge itself is invalid/irrational in whole. I'm not saying that: I'm saying that the mind's attachment to it is irrational because it denies all perception beyond itself.
Sympotomatically, Viggen, you say that "rearranged matter results from technology", as if "technology" was a thing separate from the matter. "Technology" is not a thing; it is an abstraction. I am saying that "Technology" IS ONLY rearranged matter and the objectivists making it into a thing, as their totem to pray to, is symptomatic of the irrationality described above.
To go deeper into the Music, you must let go of your attachemnt to control the music through your objectifying mind. No objectivist-attached mind who listens to music can deny the validity of this dynamic of the listening mind because he/she is performing the experiment UPON themselves!
And this is why I find the Hi fi microcosm so interesting: because the scientific-attached are finally performing an experiment on their own mind where they have to admit that their attachment to objective knowledge is partial. There does exist perceptive knowledge beyond thinking and the listening experience proves this, empirically, even to the thinking-attached.
So, here's the big question: if even the objectivists must admit that value exists in the non-thinking spaces of their listening mind as they deeply listen to music, then why, when they stop listening and start thinking and talking, are they suddenly once more arguing that nothing exists beyond that thinking? Answer: its the ATTACHMENT.
