Squonk said to dmb: How does Ken Wilber know there is such a thing as?a pre/trans fallacy? It can be stated, but why is Ken Wilber such an expert on the subject? I don't find this remotely convincing simply because Ken Wilber says it is.
dmb replies: You're objecting as if I were making an argument from authority, as the point depended on Ken Wilber's voice for all its weight. But actually his "pre/trans" fallacy could be removed entirely and the point would remain, which is simply that babies and mystics aren't the same. Ron DiSanto, co-author of "The Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" made the same point. I'd asked him about this very point long before I ever heard of Ken Wilber and he said, "Yea, sure. You have to have a mind before you can transcend it". Joseph Campbell makes the same point by way of Nietzsche. But I would hope that you'd be persuaded by the argument itself. These names do have a way of adding authority and comfort me as a kind of confirmation, but usually I like to say the same thing in several different ways just for the sake of clarity and using the terms of guys like these helps in that effort. In fact, it was Pirsig (Lila) who said that babies who fail to recognize patterns will be retarded. It is Pirsig who said that sq and DQ were both necessary. The static levels and moral codes also have a bearing on this thought experiment and could even be used to make the same point, which is that infants are different than Zen Masters. Babies aren't even competent at the biological level while the latter have mastered all static patterns and then some. As I understand it, one simply can't go from pre-linguistic brains to mysticism without going through the developmental processes in between. That's like having a ground floor and a fifth floor magically floating several stories above, with no structure to hold it up. That's like going directly from kindergarden to the University. It's like a guy with two feet, a head and nothing but empty space in between. (See how I like to say the same thing in several ways, just to be clear?) squonk: Hi David, You are not employing any arguments here, it is all an appeal?to authority. All you have done is multiply the authority. Here's an argument: No human being can remember?a pre linguistic stage, because there are no social static patterns and no intellectual static patterns to remember. Zen masters do have social static patterns, and if they are lucky they may have intellectual static patterns as well? And even they can not have memories of a pre linguistic stage, so even they can not claim mystical experience is different. You can apparently. As for the bottom/top metaphor:?the metaphor fails because evolution does skip 'in between' stages: All babies go through billions of years of evolutionary development in 9 months. Squonk also said to dmb: re. Crimes and ethical nightmares. This is your view. Thank you for stating it. dmb says: Really? You don't share this moral qualms? You think it would be ethical to thwart the normal developmental process of infants? That idea doesn't sound alarms in your conscience? I think children raised by wolves would stand a better chance of having a rich, full life. As far as crime goes, I imagine there would be no shortage of ways to charge a person for conducting such an experience. Neglect, abuse, reckless endangerment, medical malpractice, and some health codes just for starters. I'm sure the courts would order a psychiatric evaluation of the experimenter too, and rightly so. Its madness. You can't be serious. s: If the experiment gets you thinking then it's achieved a great deal. squonk 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/
