David M. asks -- > Ham, DM, (Bo?, Chris?, Magnus? all) > > I'm interested in your comments on an extensive > Lila quote to follow... > > Here Pirsig describes the evolution of the child > to explain dynamic and static quality: > > "When this reality of value is divided into static and > Dynamic areas a lot can be explained about that baby's > growth that is not well explained otherwise. > > "One can imagine how an infant in the womb acquires > awareness of simple distinctions such as pressure and > sound, and then at birth acquires more complex ones > of light and warmth and hunger. We know these > distinctions are pressure and sound and light and > warmth and hunger and so on but the baby doesn't. > We could call them stimuli but the baby doesn't identify > them as that. From the baby's point of view, something, > he knows not what, compels attention. This generalized > "something," Whitehead's "dim apprehension," is > Dynamic Quality. When he is a few months old the baby > studies his hand or a rattle, not knowing it is a hand or a > rattle, with the same sense of wonder and mystery and > excitement created by the music and heart attack in > the previous examples. > > "If the baby ignores this force of Dynamic Quality it can be > speculated that he will become mentally retarded, but if he > is normally attentive to Dynamic Quality he will soon begin > to notice differences and then correlations between the > differences and then repetitive patterns of the correlations. > But it is not until the baby is several months old that he > will begin to really understand enough about that enormously > complex correlation of sensations and boundaries and > desires called an object to be able to reach for one. > This object will not be a primary experience. It will be a > complex pattern of static values derived from primary > experience." > > "Once the baby has made a complex pattern of values > called an object and found this pattern to work well he > quickly develops a skill and speed at jumping through the > chain of deductions that produced it, as though it were > a single jump. This is similar to the the way one drives > a car. The first time there is a very slow trial-and-error > process of seeing what causes what. But in a very short > time it becomes so swift one doesn't even think about it. > The same is true of objects. One uses these complex patterns > the same way one shifts a car, without thinking about them. > Only when the shift doesn't work or an 'object' turns out > to be an illusion is one forced to become aware of the > deductive process. That is why we think of subjects and > and objects as primary. We can't remember that period > of our lives when they were anything else. > > "In this way static patterns of value become the universe of > distinguishable things. Elementary static distinctions between > such entities as 'before' and 'after' and between 'like' and > 'unlike' grow into enormously complex patterns of knowledge > that are transmitted from generation to generation as > the mythos, the culture in which we live."
This is an imaginative bit of prose by an author with no background in pediatric psychology who is attempting to explain the cognitive process as the patterning of sensations. He uses the infant as his example because it represents the beginning of subjective consciousness, which remains a mystery to the objectivist investigators. This is hardly the first time the development of consciousness has been chronicled in this manner. For example, compare this passage from psychologist Erich Fromm's 'The Art of Loving', which was published in 1956: "The infant, at the moment of birth, would feel the fear of dying, if a gracious fate did not preserve it from any awareness of the anxiety involved in the separation from mother, and from the inter-uterine environment. Even after being born, the infant is hardly different from what it was before birth; it cannot recognize objects, it is not yet aware of itself, and the world as being outside of itself. It only feels the positive stimulation of warmth and food, and it does not yet differentiate warmth and food from its source: mother. Mother_is_warmth, mother_is_food, mother _is_the euphoric state of satisfaction and security. This state is one of narcissism, to use Freud's term. The outside reality, persons and things, have meaning only in terms of their satisfying or frustrating the inner state of the body. Real is only what is within; what is outside is real only in terms of my needs -- never in terms of its own qualities or needs. "When the child grows and develops, he becomes capable of perceiving things as they are; the satisfaction of being fed becomes differentiated from the nipple, the breast from the mother. Eventually the child experiences thirst, the satisfying milk, the breast and the mother, as different entities. He learns to perceive many other things as being different, as having an existence of their own. At this point he learns to give them names. At the same time he learns to handle them; learns that the fire is hot and painful, that mother's body is warm and pleasureful, that wood is hard and heavy, that paper is light and can be torn. He learns how to handle people; that mother will smile when I eat; that she will take me in her arms when I cry; that she will praise me when I have a bowel movement. All these experiences will be crystallized and integrated in the experience; ..._I am loved because I am_." > Thoughts? Since this is running long, David, I'll express my thoughts in a follow-up post. --Ham 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/
