Matt: It is a subtle problem, one I'm not sure I have quite the skill to explain well, that revolves around _where_ this special location is if we get rid of the notion of "mind-stuff." There's nothing really wrong with the notion of a mind and consciousness in common parlance, but the kinds of things that philosophers have wanted this notion to do, the kind of roles they've wanted it to play, these considerations have led some philosophers to take all the things we tend to "put" in the mind apart and see what's going on. A lot of it has to do with taking the mind to be a mirror of reality (hence the title of Rorty's book), such that the mind _represents_ reality to us, thus pitting something in between us and reality (our minds). This general notion of what an idea (a representation of reality) and a mind (where the representations are located) is, found in Locke and Descartes (not explicitly, but kind of taken as given by the way they use the words/concepts), then sees Berkeley go, "Well, shit, then all we really know is the crap going on in our minds, and--BY OCKHAM'S RAZOR!--there's no logical reason to keep this 'reality' thinger around." This is the birth of modern idealism, which only has superficial similarities with any kinds of Greek idealism (like Plato's Forms). I will be right back around to this with your next point (from the other post).
[Krimel] I think I am aiming at the more subtle aspects of this problem. Whether or not ideas or their location have extension in space seems a rather poor way of conceiving of them. Mind and body aside, we now routinely construct virtual realities that are rooted in space but not extended in space. That is they are rooted in and dependant upon silicon chips and magnetic hard drives but these do not fully capture the "special" quality of such worlds. Idealists have a point in that all we have access to is our thoughts and representations of an organic virtual world but that does not mean that the ideal world is free of constraints from a more fundamental sets of principles. My computer generated worlds are subject to being switched off or can be altered by programmers. The "real" world is subject to the laws of physics at the most fundamental level. How does Berkeley for example handle the Kantian notion of TiTs? While I might quarrel with Kant's specific formulation of TiTs, I think there is a quality about the concept that I find as compelling as Descartes' cogito. Matt: What I mean by "direct connection," and why--in a philosophical context--I want to say we have a direct connection to everything is because of the above problem of representationalism. Engendered by the modern notion of the mind being between us and reality, Dewey suggested that, on the contrary, experience _was_ reality. However, his philosophical opponents (loosely called "realists") thought this was tantamount to idealism. After all, wasn't it Berkeley who said, absurdly, that our only actual reality was ideas, i.e. experience? Dewey, however, was making a more subtle point than that--he was rejecting the (philosophical) _distinction_ between experience and reality (and thus rejecting the then raging realism/idealism debate, which mirrors the now raging realism/anti-realism debate, rather than staking a position in those debates). [Krimel] There must be some subtlety here that escapes me. I can see no way to envision us as have any "direct" connection to anything beyond our internal representations. We are, as Jill Bolte Taylor expressed it, energy beings who transform and exchange physical energy from the external world into biochemical-electrical patterns. However, our internal electrochemical patterns are separated in time and space from the TiTs that they reflect. We can attempt to discover the limits of our ability to construct these patterns. We can look for ways to assess the accuracy of these patterns. We can seek as dmb and his merry mystics do, to transcend these patterns. But I think it is futile to assert that our connection to TiTs is unmediated by them. Matt: Another way of putting this is that representationalists believe our connection to reality--as a whole--isn't direct because the mind mediates between us and it. Dewey, in counterposition, was saying we have a _direct_ connection to reality, as a whole. Pirsig is saying the same thing. And so are neopragmatists like Rorty. That's why I say "direct connection to all things." Better would've been "to _everything_," and then understanding by "everything" to mean "reality, as a whole" (what are two words that encompass everything--reality and universe). [Krimel] I don't think Pirsig does say we have direct access to "reality". He says that we have internal constructions and that we have in born values that mediate our experience. But I don't think he claims that it is even possible to have direct contact with TiTs. Matt: The biggest trouble I've had with Pirsig, and which DMB has had with me, is that, after saying that we are always directly connected to reality--to dispose of the realism/idealism debate and pernicious representationalism--Pirsig insists on using a direct/indirect distinction in talking about experience. I've always thought this weird, and many of the attempts to gloss Pirsig I've thought unsuccessful in allaying fears that we are regressing. However, there are ways to use the distinction, and I've read some interpretations of particularly Dewey (and, oddly enough, ancient Greek thought) that have begun to make sense of what they were trying to say. [Krimel] Again I don't think Pirsig claims a direct connection so I don't see any "regression". Matt said: But when you say "I am hungry," I attribute to you the belief that you are hungry because a) it allows me to predict your behavior (I'm guessing you are going to look for food) and b) it allows both of us to be wrong (you might eat a little something, and find that, it turns out, you aren't actually hungry, lending credence to the then apropos "Well, he _believed_ he was hungry, but wasn't actually hungry.") Our choice in language is just as much a behavior to be tracked and predicted as other behaviors, like eating and running from tigers. [Krimel] You are devolving this into talk about linguistics which is exactly what I think this example shows is a wrong way of thinking. The only knowledge I have of your internal states is your expression of them. If you say you are hungry then that is all I have to go on. On the other hand if I am hungry the only linguist content my experience is likely to have is "what's for lunch?" Language functions to communicate with others about our internal states and this is certainly behavior. But while language is generated by us to communicate with others it is unnecessary for us to communicate with ourselves. We may do it out of habit or because we can adopt a point of view of ourselves as objects. But this seems to me to be habit and not a suggestion that language is primary to thought or that all thought is linguistic or that language is all that philosophy is about. 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/
