Hi DMB and all
More clarifications:
DMB: "The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by
experience will save us is an artificial [fake!] conception of the relations
between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject
and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and
thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by
the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which all
sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome. Representative theories
put a mental 'representation,' 'image,' or 'content' into the gap, as a sort
of intermediary [traditional empiricists like Hume]. Common-sense theories
left the gap untouched, declaring our mind able to clear it by a
self-transcending leap [naive realism]. Transcendentalist theories left it
impossible to traverse by finite knowers, and brought an Absolute in to
perform the saltatory act [Kant and Hegel]. All the while, in the very bosom
of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation
intelligible is given in full."
DM: Pretty impressive explanation of SOM, nothing to do with what I am
suggesting though. If you think my suggestion does not work, or is less
impressive than keeping pre-conceptual SQ out of the MOQ please just say so
and explain your reasons and values, etc, but my proposal also avoids SOM,
it is just as easy for me to say your version of the MOQ lets SOM by the
back door as I think I have shown, I don't really want to do that but what
is source for the goose... I see some purity in the experience=experience
position, but I think the anti-science flaw is too problematic, so I offer
an alternative, how does the Dan/DMB MOQ describe science in non-realist and
anthropocentric terms? I have some idea what that looks like, but I don't
like it too much. Whether Pirsig supports the Dan/DMB MOQ I am not 100% sure
but maybe he does, if so I hope he will change his mind. Where do others
stand?
DMB: By contrast, radical empiricism says, "that subjects and objects are
not the starting points of experience. Subjects and objects are secondary.
DM: I agree, subjects and objects are probably not even a good idea, they
are certainly flawed (yes not floored, I am a moron sometimes) and result in
the errors of positivism, physicalism, Kantianism, reductionism,
materialism, elimiativism, idealism, idealist anthropocentrism, non-realism
and uncritical realism, etc
DMB: They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he
[William James] described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the
MATERIAL to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.' In this
basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, as as
those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and
matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure
experience [DQ] cannot be called either physical or psychical; it logically
precedes this distinction."
DM: OK you say flux and I say flux and patters, DQ and SQ. You say Quality
is DQ, I say it is DQ/patterns. You say conceptual SQ, I say both conceptual
and pre-conceptual SQ. James finds MATERIAL in the flux I find only
patterns. I say concepts are derived from something more fundamental which
is the SQ experience in the overall sea of DQ experience, you only see DQ
experience. Then you go on to talk about SQ conceptions as being part of
experience. This is a fine difference (not MOQ versus SOM unless you are
deaf and dumb) but important and I want to hang non-SOM realism on this
difference, you think realism without SOM is impossible, I say that is an
idealist trap, and idealism sounds like a fall back into SOM assumptions to
me. You see only DQ and build SQ on it. I see DQ and SQ as co-creative, I
experience DQ as a lack of SQ, and SQ as the temporary negation of DQ, I see
DQ/SQ as a yin-yang pair that co-emerge from experience. DQ and SQ emerge
from our experience they precede any distinction about the physical or
psychical, you only see DQ precedes, I think both SQ and DQ precedes any
other distinction including, especially including SOM ones. You seem afraid
of SQ as if it implies SOM, well I think MOQ banished SOM with the DQ and SQ
distinction, you want to stick only with DQ. Sure DQ is undefinable so it is
easier to defend it from SOM, that is your purity, I suggest SQ patterns
have nothing to do with SOM and I think this suggestion can be defended and
can embrace n on-SOM realism.
DMB: The status of subjects and objects is hereby reduced from the starting
points of experience to concepts derived from experience. Radical
empiricists maintain that all concepts and all abstractions are derived from
experience and are true and good only to the extent that they function
within the ongoing process of living. But this rejection of SOM is also
about solving philosophical problems.
Radical empiricism saves us from having to invent a fancy metaphysical
theory as to the relations between subjects and objects - this is the same
as the relation between phenomenal reality and the noumenal realm of things
in themselves. By treating subjects and objects as "absolutely discontinuous
entities", these theories are concerned with overcoming fictional gap
between experience and reality. Ironically, the real "reality" in each case
is actually a concept invented and posited to explain experience. "Of course
it's just an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians don't
know that." But for Pirsig there is no gap between experience and reality.
Experience IS reality, the primary empirical. Likewise James says,
"experience and reality amount to the same thing". Everything you need to
make the relations between knower and known intelligible is already right
there in experience. That's where these concepts came from in the first
place. It's a bit paradoxical, I know, but the idea that there is a reality
prior to experience and which makes experience possible is just an idea.
When this idea is mistaken for more than that, it become a primary reality
in itself, an actual ontological starting point of reality. That is what it
means to reify an idea. That is what it means to be under the spell of SOM.
The following three quotes might help to break the spell. It may or may not
help to click the heels of your ruby slippers three times as you read them.
DM: Overall I entirely agree with this, I would change the language very
very slightly, but the logic is right. But one part of experience that won't
go away and we have to make sense of is that there was a reality before
human beings came along, it was not experienced by human beings but it
clearly existed, this is a good idea, and we can have this idea without
turning it into any for of SOM I suggest, let's call it critical non-SOM
realism. We can say near to nothing about this reality, all SOM must be
ditched as unsupported, but that there is such a non-human reality is well
evidenced in our experience because our experiences is finite and has gaps
(mummy leaves the house and then comes back again, mummy was alive before we
were born, and dinosaurs were alive when no humans were), these give us good
reasons and good ideas, it is a reason of the gaps if you like because our
knowledge is always incomplete and gappy, but it also evolves and some gaps
get reduced, like when we understand that water and ice are well related
patterns not unrelated ones, but this is not a gap between appearances and
reality just gaps in how we link together the endless unfolding patterns of
SQ.
"Phædrus felt that at the moment of pure Quality perception, or not even
perception, at the moment of pure Quality, there is no subject and there is
no object. There is only a sense of Quality that produces a later awareness
of subjects and objects. At the moment of pure quality, subject and object
are identical. This is the tat tvam asi truth of the Upanishads, but it's
also reflected in modern street argot. ``Getting with it,'' ``digging it,''
``grooving on it'' are all slang reflections of this identity. It is this
identity that is the basis of craftsmanship in all the technical arts. And
it is this identity that modern, dualistically conceived technology lacks."
(Robert Pirsig, ZAMM pp. 290-91)
DM: Sure, and we can Zen our arrows into their targets, but only because we
experience both SQ and DQ.
"‘Pure experience’ is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of life
which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
categories. Only newborn babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs,
illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the
literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be
all sorts of whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects
that don’t appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases
interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity can be
caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for feeling or
sensation. But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself
with emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and
abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives
and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a relative
term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized sensation which it
still embodies." (William James, "THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS", p. 40)
DM: One and many, DQ and SQ, can't put it better myself, Pirsig is pretty
smart. Although one and many is a pretty clear distinction I'd say, sure it
is hard to get any handle on the many without words and concepts, but hey,
we somehow get the idea that there is a many that we need to start tracing
the cuts and naming and conceptualising. Sure naming and conceptualising
really defines the cuts, and there's more than one way to cut your chicken,
but you gotta have some idea that cutting is possible and their might be
chickens to cut to ever get started on making conceptual SQ. Sensations,
bodies, brains, get all cut up long before language and concepts come along
and add clarity and definition. That's how you get fingers and eyes, these
organic patterns do a whole lot of cutting up of reality before we reach the
non unconscious level of cutting up called language and concepts. Take this
example, this experience gets measured as one line being shorter than the
other long before we add any conscious concepts to it, but both lines are
the same size, SQ at work unconsciously I'd say:
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/muller-lyer-illusion.htm
DMB: "the leading edge of reality, is no longer an irrelevant offshoot of
structure. Value is the predecessor of structure. It's the preintellectual
awareness that gives rise to it. Our structured reality is preselected on
the basis of value, and really to understand structured reality requires an
understanding of the value source from which it's derived. …Reality isn't
static anymore. It's not a set of ideas you have to either fight or resign
yourself to. It's made up, in part, of ideas that are expected to grow as
you grow, and as we all grow, century after century. With Quality as a
central undefined term, reality is, in its essential nature, not static but
dynamic. " (Robert Pirsig, ZAMM p. 284)
DM: I agree experience is more dynamic than static, take a great painting or
work of music, every time you return to it you find more in it, the SQ is
endless and never ending and potentially open to change, such is DQ, it is
dominant, nonetheless SQ exists in our experience and unfolds from it,
Pirsig fails to emphasise this, but we can't expect him to do all the heavy
lifting can we, he has done enough for us. By the way I am not changing my
position on DQ, but it is clear that many previous comments have
misunderstood how I feel about DQ.
DMB: In the first one Pirsig says there is no subject and object in the
moment of pure Quality, but that "sense of Quality" is what "produces a
later awareness of subjects and objects".
DM: Sure but we can probably do without subjects and objects all together,
let's stop going on about them this is an MOQ forum is it not? It is not me
who keeps bringing them up!
DMB: Similarly, in the second quote James says pure experience "is not yet
any definite what" but it's "ready to be all sorts of whats".
DM: Yep all sort of ready, I call this pre-conceptual SQ, I can't see how DQ
can be ready, it has no patterns, it needs a little splash of pre-conceptual
SQ I say,
DMB: There are no such distinctions or identities in the flux of pure
experience itself but It is what "furnishes the material" for our conceptual
categories. It is the DQ that becomes static quality as soon as you define
it, as soon as the salient parts of experience "become identified and fixed
and abstracted".
DM: Sure DQ is primary, its nothing really, but you are fetishising concepts
if you think SQ is impossible without them. Do you think concept free
monkeys and babies can spot that they have something on the end of their
legs that are the same and something on the end of their arms that are a bit
different? All pre-conceptual patterns I'd say, unless you want to say that
all hearing, seeing, smelling,etc contains some sort of built in concepts. I
just call this pre-conceptual SQ.
DMB: But the primary empirical reality we're talking about here is referred
to as a "flux," as "dynamic," as "the leading edge of reality" because it is
not structured. It is "the predecessor of structure".
DM: Pretty sure science says that all our senses look pretty structured, its
a miracle we can recognise the DQ, but luckily we can, bad philosophy and
science often talk like there is no DQ, this is the big error MOQ can save
us from, but if this is done at the expense of SQ we loose touch with all
the potential structure there is in experience and there goes the baby and
the bath water.
DMB: Our "structured reality" is conceptual and static and you want that to
be ordered and structured but, unlike SOMers down through the ages, they do
not suppose that the structure of our thought mirrors the structure of
reality or corresponds to a pre-existing structure. We add this structure.
These are man-made structures and they serve human purposes.
DM: Yes we approach this all via man made ideas and culture, but bodies and
sense organs are not man made, they are full of structure and structure out
experience, dent this and you fall into idealism, sure experience is primary
and we only find out about the structural function of organic patterns like
sense organs and bodies and brains via our investigations and reasoning but
they are still there independently structuring patterns out of the flux
without human conscious conceptualisation. You can't see or accept that then
you are an idealist or a creationist.
DMB: DQ is the primary empirical reality and the source of all these
conceptual structures but DQ is negatively defined by exactly that. It is
neither conceptual nor structured. It is unpatterned and undifferentiated
Quality.
DM: Sure that is why we need SQ in experience to explain what concepts are
referring to, they do not refer to objects but simply to patterns of
experience.
DMB: There are no subject and objects, no Forms, no substances, no
things-in-themselves. All of that comes later because those are ideas,
products of reflections, concepts derived from experience for philosophical
purposes and not primary realities of their own.
DM: Sure, but patterns and forms are within our experience not something
outside of it. If there was only DQ in experience what is conceptual SQ
talking about, pointing at?
DMB: "Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and
therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the
intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This
preintellectual reality is what Phædrus felt he had properly identified as
Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this
preintellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects
and objects." (Robert Pirsig, ZAMM p. 247)
DM: Sure all things intellectual are an embellishment of primary reality,
yet perhaps we are better saying that all emerging SQ is fully real, why
not? But the idea that there is no pattern, no structure, no form to be
found in experience (not out in the world that is an idea that comes later
when we see how full of gaps our experience is) just falls down if you give
it any scrutiny, however pure and amazing an idea it seems to be. Sure we
can find nothing underneath SQ, under SQ there can only be DQ. DQ is the
context in which we can try to make sense of SQ, but SQ is not made by us
(you anthropocentrists), rather we find ourselves emerging out of DQ and SQ
and we find the world emerges from this SQ and DQ too, and they are really
one, in experience there is both self and world they are one, how can you
draw a line between them, here I am, here is the sky, where does the sky end
and I begin? where do I end and the sky begin? But there is something beyond
this here and now, beyond the horizon, and you just know there is more to be
discovered. Being alive is not to be an object experiencing an object, it is
just being alive, being alive is being this experience of this earth and
this sky, experience is neither subject nor object, it is a
being-in-the-world (one word).
DMB: "In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective
thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject and
object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make
them. Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it
logically precedes this distinction." (Robert Pirsig, LILA ch. 29)
DM: Yes, experience is just the content, no subject, no object, but it has
content, I think we should call this content SQ, surely DQ is contentless,
it is flux. DMB and Dan seem to think DQ is a flux with content, odd use of
the word flux. Up to you really do you prefer pre-conceptual SQ, pretty
sensible notion, or flux with content? -bit odd. Looks like you accept the
content, Pirsig too, so why not call it SQ, I thought that is what the MOQ
did, but things seem to have changed. Why is that? Maybe contact with
universities and the wider world where SOM is dominant is making the MOQ
misshape itself into a sort of idealism as this fits into SOM or even
postmodernism more easily? Yes MOQ needs to promote DQ and bring out the DQ
in experience, but no need to sacrifice SQ for this cause I suggest. Of
course there is no distinction between content and self in the MOQ, it is
all content, the content of experience, called SQ and DQ, a monism of DQ is
nothing, without SQ what can DQ mean? Yin and yang together I say. If there
was only DQ there would be nothing, sure we all come from nothing and we all
return to nothing, and we can only make sense of actuality in relation to
nothing, but there is something acting in actuality, it prods us, we not not
what it is or what it wants to say, but we can describe the little waves and
patterns we see in the void, they come and go, they are ghostly, hard to see
and uncertain, but if there were no waves on the sea we would not know there
was any sea would we?
Hope that clarifies a few confusions set up by my opponents.
NB: Many thanks as you have greatly helped clarify my thinking on these
issues, which is what I come here for.
NB: Chaos and order, getting the balance:
http://www.utne.com/environment/life-rules-ze0z1304zcalt.aspx?newsletter=1&utm_content=05.03.13+politics&utm_campaign=2013+ENEWS&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email
Regards
David M
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