Hi Ham, > > Steven Pinker was new to me, so I did some research and learned that he is a > Harvard psychology professor who has written a lot of books about language > as related to (Gav's word) "ideation". This would tend to position him > closer to the semioticists here than to "valuists" like Pirsig and myself.
You are like Pirsig in being more of a valuist than a semioticist? I presume this means that you agree with Pirsig that experience comes prior to language and therefore concepts. However, Pirsig equates experience with value which I thought you deny. So how does your being a "valuist" agree with Pirsig? > also read his long essay "The Mystery of Consciousness" which is > accessible > at TIME's website. Proof that Pinker is not an essentialist is this > statement that appears under his heading "The Brain as Machine": > > "Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine not because they are > mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every > aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain." > > That conclusion is not only unfounded but is more evidence of the drift > toward psycho-cybernetics that characterizes our postmodern thinking. It is > what Richard Schain, a psychiatrist, describes as "the modern view that > there is no such thing as the self, that there is only a complex arrangement > of synapses and neurons in the brain, giving rise to the illusion of self." > > No neurophysicist, cognitive scientist, or brain surgeon has found, or will > ever find, subjective consciousness in the brain. He may discover > "ties"--evidence of responsive mechanisms linked to conscious behavior--but > not consciousness itself. By the same token, no cyberneticist or > nanotechnician will ever build a machine with consciousness in it. These > are myths of New Age pseudo-scientism. (It angers me to see the conscious > self explained as a digital mechanism, especially by intellectuals who > should know better than to confuse information with awareness.) On that we totally agree. > > Maybe I get it wrong but it seems the division of subject/object > > in your metaphysics would be one of items in Pinker's "cast of basic > > concepts" if not indeed the primary concept. > > Your reviewer states that the cast of basic concepts "...includes notions of > things happening (not anything happening in particular; rather, the idea of > happening). We all contrast ... coming from going; human from nonhuman, > animate from inanimate. We cause things to happen; we prevent things from > happening. These are the most general kinds of states, actions, and > conditions, and these are what Mr. Pinker avers 'to be the major words in a > language of thought.'" > > I don't see the "division of subject/object" in this analysis. Right. The analysis talks about a "cast of basic concepts," among which are the ones mentioned. I didn't take the author to mean the ones mentioned were exclusive. > I take it to > mean simply that we are all aware of change as a continuum of connected > events and exercise some control over them. That's hardly a profound > revelation. We observe reality from an infinitesimal point in the > space/time system and ascribe dimensionality to it. This illusory > perspective is partly due to the limitations of organic sensibility. But I > believe it has more to do with the primary division of sensibility from its > source, which is at the root of all differentiation. Yes, exactly my point. You would include in the cast of basic concepts the primary division of subject from object. In fact, that is the primary concept. > That we see the universe as an intelligently designed, orderly system > indicates that we "make sense out of it", which is precisely what human > reason is designed to do. When it doesn't make sense, something has gone > awry with the main apparatus of reason, the brain or its ability to > integrate sensory data. But the disoriented psychotic person maintains > selfness, even if he loses all sense of time, space, or the knowledge of > what objects and people are. He is still a conscious self capable of > value-awareness. Agree. > Thanks for introducing me to Pinker, Platt, even though the views of Pinker > and Priday hardly go together like two P's in a pod ;-) The only reason I brought up Pinker is that many intellectuals bow at his feet. Neither you nor I necessarily agree with 90 percent of what he claims. But, I thought his notion of hard-wired basic concepts fit with your innate, intuitive awareness/of something division. > But can you be > more specific regarding the primary subject/object division about which you > seem to have some reservations? My only problem is that logically you have to have a whole before you can slice it in half. It makes sense to me that the whole is "Quality" as explicated to my satisfaction (mostly) in the MOQ. Best regards, Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
