Hi Gav, Marsha --
[Gav, on the Static Self]:
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.
See, Marsha? The MoQuist says "the individual is borne of the intellectual
level". That means DQ is the essence of the self. He also believes
consciousness (at some level) is controlled by the collective -- I assume he
means "collective intellect". This epistemology totally denies the subject
of awareness and the possibility of an autonomous self. No wonder you are
confused!
If the individual is only an "idea", whose idea is it? Who but the
individual self KNOWS that it is aware? Does DQ know? Does the
"intellectual level" know? If neither knows, "idea" is a meaningless word,
and there is no self. At least I know that I do not exist by "control of
the collective". I am my own agent, thank you, and so are you. If it
weren't for Pirsig's Quality thesis, this would be self-evident. Obviously,
the author has found it necessary to dismiss selfness as the conscious locus
of experiential reality. And, since he attributes reality to experience,
one is left to wonder who or what it is that experiences.
[Ham, previously]:
Does a collection of patterns KNOW?
Does a bunch of concepts THINK?
[Marsha]:
A collection of patterns might be conceptual patterns of
the social or intellectual kind. Thinking is an experience
dependent on a cause of some sort, either via the senses
or a previous thought.
Yes, it might be, but causal explanations like this invoke the fallacy of
infinite regression and lead nowhere. Rather than ponder what "causes"
thinking, or trying to define thinking as experience, I submit that it is
more important to realize that the Thinker is the Self. The notion of
thoughts existing somewhere without a thinker is absurd; yet if you take the
MoQ and its Intellectual level literally (as I do), it seems to lead toward
that conclusion.
Arthur Smith's essay on the Mind/Body debate may be enlightening in this
regard. In his Abstract, Dr. Smith writes:
"Human experience is both dualistic and monistic. It is monistic in that
everything is experience, but dualistic in that it involves both knower and
known. Since Socrates, an axiom of Western philosophy has been that rational
discussion begins with defining what that subject matter is. We could say
that consciousness (or at least ordinary human consciousness) is experience
as a knower-self (noesis) that experiences known-others (noema). Both are
essential aspects of experience. Without the noesis, consciousness would be
unconscious. Without the noema it would be conscious of nothing, i.e., also
unconscious. Thus human experience is noetically dualistic in its
distinction of knower and known, but ontologically monistic in being all
experience.
"In that sense, empirical science itself, even when it studies distant
galaxies, is part of the 'science of consciousness,' because it can study
only phenomena in consciousness. However, not everyone would call this a
"science of consciousness." Some want a science of the knower without
reference to the known, and this is where it gets tricky. As soon as we make
consciousness an object of study, it becomes the known, and the people
studying it, the knowers, and an infinite regress of self-reference ensues.
"
--www.arthursmithphd.com/writings.htm
In other words, the knowing-self (noesis) is the locus of all experience
(noema). And if experience is "the cutting edge of reality", as Pirsig
says, having a subject to experience (and perhaps thereby dilineate)
otherness as a differentiated reality is consistent with his theory of a
quality source. Since everything in existence is
individuated and relational, it seems logical that knowing (noesis or
being-aware) would also be divided into individual agents. (You'll have to
tell my why Pirsig avoids the logic of this epistemology.)
Am I getting anywhere with you, Marsha?
--Ham
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