Ham said to Marsha: If the individual is only an "idea", whose idea is it? Who but the individual self KNOWS that it is aware? ...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.
dmb says: Interesting that you'd put it that way. As a matter of fact there is a book about psychotherapy written from a Buddhist perspective. Care to guess what the title is? Its called "Thought Without a Thinker". I understand how such an idea could seem absurd to one who has never encountered it before but it is widely known and discussed. In at least some of the Buddhist traditons, the "autonomous self" that you're advocating is considered to be a form of ignorance and the cause of all suffering. It is the greatest illusion in the world and enlightenment is the shattering of that illusion. To put it in the dramatic terms, the goal is to get beyond the ego, the little self. There are Western philosophers who get at this idea, Mystics, the pragmatists, some postmodern types and probably others I don't even know about yet. How can there be thoughts without a thinker? The same way there can be rain without a rainer. We say "it is raining" without bothering to ask about the "it" because we know that there is nothing doing the raining except the rain itself. There is no agent above or beyond the rain which performs this function. And that's how it is with thinking. Why does there need to be an agent which performs this task? Why does there need to be an entity above and beyond the thinking itself? See, from a certain perspective your question is absurd. It is very much like belief in the rainer behind the rain, or the thunderer beyond the thunder or the grower separate from the growth. As Gav recently pointed out, the individualism you're advocating here is classic SOM. It is one of the most basic and central ideas in the Modern West since Descartes. It also happens to be Pirsig's central target in ZAMM. He deconstructs it with a vengence. Hopefully you paid some attention to the Pirsig/Dewey thing I wrote for you and which started this thread. It is more than just a little silly to act like nobody has ever heard it before. I think it only seems like you're having trouble "getting through" to Marsha. She can speak for herself of course, but I think she knows what you're saying and had more or less rejected even before you came here to advocate it. I think Ron's assessment is probably right on. Seems like your temperament is such that the MOQ feels all wrong and since you've gone so far as to write a book on Essentialism you're probably pretty committed to the idea. That's completely normal and I don't expect you to give it up overnight, if ever. But if you absolutely insist on following this line of thought, may I suggest that you learn something about how and why Pirsig rejects it. Around here it simply won't be enough to call it "absurd". You're gonna have to develop an argument that goes well beyond what you've been doing if you hope to convince anyone. As I keep trying to explain, you're essentially offering the thing that gets rejected on the road to the MOQ. Its like asking MOQers to go backwards. Its like saying algebra is "absurd" and then telling us how wonderful it is to know about multiplication and division. Thanks. _________________________________________________________________ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_072008 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/
