Exactly why I consider the intellectual level to be the individual level.
It
holds high the value of the individual by fighting the efforts of the
collectivist social level to dominate and put everyone in the service of
the
Giant, i.e., the "public good.".
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 5:21 AM, gav <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> the individual is borne of the intellectual level - it is an idea.
> the idea of oneself as an autonomous agent evolves from and opposes the
> purely social (bicameral?) level of consciousness....which operates by
the
> control of the collective via a deity, king etc.
>
>
> --- On Mon, 7/7/08, david buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > From: david buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: [MD] Static Self
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Received: Monday, 7 July, 2008, 5:46 AM
> > Ham said to Craig and Marsha:
> > Pirsig...has put man in a cosmic "vat" by denying
> > him the autonomy of free choice and self-determination.
> > ...the MoQist view of what man is -- not an entity, not a
> > self, not even a proprietary subject, but patterns of value
> > in a field of quality. There is no "free agency"
> > in such a construct because the "field" itself is
> > the operand of the patterns. The static patterns, in other
> > words, are programmed by DQ.
> >
> > "To the extent that one's behavior is controlled
> > by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to
> > the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality, which is
> > undefinable, one's behavior is free." (Robert
> > Pirsig in Lila)
> >
> > Ham continued:
> > I've been unable to find any references to
> > individuality, individualism, individual freedom,
> > self-determination, proprietary awareness, or personal
> > autonomy. Instead, in all these quotes citing
> > "subjects", "mind", "life",
> > and "free", there is the presumption of a
> > collective consciousness being dominated or controlled by
> > DQ.
> > Unless you can provide a statement by the author supporting
> > the individual as the conscious locus of existential reality
> > or the agent of value in the world, I don't see how you
> > can refute my "self in a vat" characterization of
> > his philosophy
> >
> > dmb says:
> > There are no supporting references to individualism and
> > there is no self in a vat either. As I've tried to
> > explain once or twice already, the MOQ rejects some basic
> > metaphysical assumptions but you're reading the MOQ as
> > if those assumptions still figured into what Pirsig is
> > saying. Like many philosophers over the last century or so,
> > he rejects the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics,
> > which is known around here as "SOM". Your
> > questions clearly emphasize the individual's awareness,
> > personal autonomy and the like. There is a common sense
> > level in which these concepts make a great deal of sense,
> > but here we are talking about a philosophy that rejects a
> > lot of the traditional ideas about subjectivity and
> > objectivity. Listening to you and Marsha discuss the matter
> > is like listening to Ayn Rand trying to convince a Buddhist
> > monk to be more selfish. But the difference is not really
> > that stark. We don't need to go East to see what this
> > rejection looks like or what it means. Pirs
> > ig's pragmatism and radical empiricism are enough. In
> > fact, you could go back 100 years and find it in the work
> > of Dewey and James. They rejected SOM, adopted radical
> > empiricism and did so in plain english. John Stuhr explains
> > it pretty well in his introduction to Dewey. Stuhr is the
> > editor of an anthology that was assigned reading in a grad
> > school course on pragmatism. As I understand it, every
> > thing he says here about Dewey could also be said of
> > Pirsig, James and other classical pragmatists. He says,...
> >
> > "At the outset, it is vital to distinguish Dewey's
> > theory of experience and his 'empiricism' from the
> > philosophical traditions and theories which he seeks to
> > overcome and abandon. Dewey's major criticisms of
> > traditional empiricism are neatly summarized in 'The
> > Need for a Recovery of Philosophy". Here Dewey rejects
> > the traditional view of experience as something subjective
> > and psychical, as 'particularistic' or composed of
> > discrete sense data assembled by the understanding, as
> > primarily an affair of knowing, as directed primarily at
> > the past, and as something separate from and opposed to
> > thought.
> > How, then, does Dewey positively characterize experience?
> > In the beginning to understand his view, it cannot be
> > overemphasized that Dewey is not using the word
> > 'experience' in its conventional sense. For Dewey,
> > experience is not to be understood in terms of the
> > experiencING subject, or as the interaction of a subject
> > and object that exist separate from the interaction.
> > Instead, Dewey's view is radically empirical:
> > experience is an activity in which subject and object are
> > unified and CONSTITUTED as partial features and relations
> > within this ongoing, unanalyzed unity. Dewey warns us not
> > to misconstrue aspects of this unified experience-activity:
> > distinctions made in reflection. If we don confuse them, we
> > invent the philosophical problem of how to get them
> > together.
> > The error of materialists and idealists alike - the error
> > of conferring existential status upon the products of
> > reflection - is the result of neglect of the context of
> > reflection on experience."
> >
> > dmb continues:
> > In addition to those passages where Pirsig simply declares
> > his MOQ to be a form of pragmatism and radical empiricism,
> > there is also this explanation about the limits of
> > traditional empiricism, which assumes SOM and limits
> > experience to what can be known through the five sense
> > organs and which is known as sensory empiricism.
> >
> > "The MOQ RESTATES the empirical basis of logical
> > positivism with more precision, more inclusiveness, more
> > explanatory power than it has previously had. It says that
> > values are not outside of the experience that logical
> > positivism limits itself to. They are the ESSENCE of this
> > experience. Values are MORE empirical, in fact, than
> > subjects and objects. (Hot stove example is here) ...This
> > value is more immediate, more directly sensed than any
> > 'self' or any 'object' to which it might
> > later be assigned. ..It is the primary empirical reality
> > from which such things as stoves and heat and oaths and
> > self are latter intellectually constructed. Onces this
> > primary relationship is cleared up an awful lot of
> > mysteries get solved. The reason values seem so
> > woolly-headed to empiricists is that empiricists keep
> > trying to assign them to subjects or objects. You can't
> > do it. You get all mixed up because values don't belong
> > to either group. They are a separate category all their own
> > ..but showing
> > that, of course, is a very big job..." (Lila 66-7,
> > near the end of chapter 5)
> >
> > dmb continues"
> > Compare Dewey's phrases "distinctions made in
> > reflection" and "products of reflection"
> > with Pirsig's notion of things as "intellectually
> > constructed". Compare Dewey's "unanalyzed
> > unity" with Pirsigian notions like "indefinable
> > quality", "pre-intellectual experience" or
> > "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum". These are
> > ways of talking about the static/dynamic split, where the
> > distinctions, reflections and intellectual constructions
> > are all static while the primary reality is dynamic and
> > prior to all that. More to the point for our purposes here,
> > both of them are trying to explain how the individual
> > subject is derived from experience rather than the locus of
> > experience. They both insist than this is a case of giving
> > existential status to an idea, of treating a concept about
> > or interpretation of experience as if it were the cause of
> > experience, the pre-requisites of experience. It is in this
> > sense that they reject the the subjective self and objective
> > reality. Like I said, these
> > are perfectly fine AS CONCEPTS. But when we take them as
> > metaphysical assumptions, we can get very confused,
> > especially if we read Dewey, James or Pirsig as if they
> > hadn't abandoned those assumptions.
> >
> > I sincerely hope that helps.
> > dmb
> >
> >
> >
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