Krimel said awhile back: Ok, we get "betterness" but we get "worserness" too. Whether we run away from worserness or towards betterness is a chicken and egg kind of question. The example of the hot stove is the example of reflex action. It is a purely hardwired biological reflex action; in which certain pain receptors bypass any cognitive processing at all. The input connects directly to the output. We jerk away from pain. ...What you describe below seems hardly more sophisticated. These are experiences that all animals have and are necessary for their survival. Even single cell organisms have tropisms where they are attracted to light or repelled from acids... That sense of Quality as Pirsig calls it is unconscious and primitive in evolutionary terms.
dmb says: Right, better and worse aren't even as far apart as the chicken and egg. To move away from the bad IS better and vice versa. [Krimel] The issue isn't which comes first' betterness or worseness. It issue is, do we run away from worseness or towards betterness. Which direction we head in is a matter of context and interpretation. Mammals did not become dominant life forms because they were excellent in the pursuit of betterness. They did so because the dinosaurs could not run away from the worseness of the big rock that fell from heaven. That big rock was pure DQ. [dmb] The two opposed ways of characterizing it are among the post hoc descriptions of a pre-verbal experience. More importantly, your description of the hot stove example as a "hardwired biological reflex action" is also among the post hoc descriptions. [Krimel] Any description of any experience is post hoc and requires some level of reflection. This is just as true of "pure experience" or any form of "pre-intellectual" experience. If it is out of bounds to discuss the nervous system in analyzing what happens in the hot stove example on SOM grounds it should be just as out of bounds to discuss heat or stoves or hands. The entire metaphor implodes in a blast of metaphysical purity. [dmb] What's more, the description of input and output, of organisms reacting to external stimuli, is based on the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics. So you have missed the point in two very important ways. (It also suffers from the usual reductionism.) In both cases you are unsaying what Pirsig has said and so it's no wonder you are underwhelmed by it. [Krimel] The whole point of any explanation whatsoever is to compress knowledge. A good explanation simplifies the complex. It renders things comprehensible. By the time we get around to talking about biology we are well beyond metaphysics. We are talking about empirical observation of phenomena. We are talking about the possibility of intersubjective agreement about both methods and observations. When you complain about "reductionism" I believe you are talking about what Dennett calls greedy reductionism which would attempt to discuss the Battle of Waterloo in terms of quantum mechanics. Of course this view "suffers" from a host of problems. I suspect you would be hard pressed to find adherents to this position. On the otherhand if you are saying that any form of reductionism has problems I would say the problem is yours. To claim that we can understand experience without reference to biology strikes me as wrong headed. It is like saying that the world is made up of holons but we can understand any particular holon without reference to the parts that compose it or the whole of which it is a part. You seem to be claiming on the one hand that the intellectual emerges from social, biological and inorganic but on the other hand considering how the biological shapes the intellectual is irrelevant reductionism. [dmb] Seems like each time I complain about this kind of move you take it as some kind of disrespect for science. That's not at all what I'm saying. As far as intellectual descriptions go, that's a good one and in most cases I'd proceed as if it were the truth. It's based on experience, it works and it makes sense almost all the time. The dispute here is the way you're using it as if it were an appropriate response to a metaphysical, epistemological point. It's not. It's a category error of some kind and it's a whopper. As a result you repeatedly undo the main point. [Krimel] I would say that your assumption that metaphysical constructions are immune from direction observation or empirical testing puts you squarely in the Ham school of philosophy where evidence, intersubjective agreement and inference based on data are irrelevant. Try Googleing "dark sucker theory" lots of clever intellectual justification of the absurd. I think you'll like it. Beyond that I don't think there is a category error here at all. If epistemology asks questions about how we know that psycho-biology is an attempt to answer those questions directly. "Knowing" is something that occurs in creatures. To ask, how we know, requires that we look about sensation which is a source of knowledge. The MoQ does after all subscribe to empiricism. I hardly think it is irrelevant or "error" to ask how is experience encoded. How does our ability to "know" develop both in evolutionary and psychological terms. Seriously, Dave are these really principled arguments you are attempting to make or is it that the results of the kind of inquiry I am suggesting threatens your metaphysical assumptions? [dmb] Not that you should be overwhelmed, but I think it's important to realize that this is the pivot point of Pirsig's revolution. It's not supposed to be scientifically sophisticated. He's talking metaphysics here, turning SOM on its head. [Krimel] I think you are just dead wrong here. The MoQ IS scientifically sophisticated. If we strip away some of Pirsig's misunderstandings of things like evolution and random access, it is possible to see the MoQ as foundational to them. I fear that your focus on mushy new age stuff is what hinders the MoQ from actually becoming revolutionary. After all Pirsig says in the Copleston annotations, "If the Quantum theory can be called scientifically materialistic, then the MOQ supports scientific materialism." This is one of the reasons I don't mind your attempts to plaster the label of scientific materialist on me. Krimel earlier: I am puzzled that you think much can be made from this kind of experiences. Isn't it after all the higher level processes of cognition that define us as human? They serve as checks and balances on the more primitive emotional responses. The capacity for rational thought seems to arise from the fact that these instant impressions and pre-intellectual responses are very often wrong and the ability to override them is a serious benefit. ...Certainly they come before cognitive assessment but without cognitive assessment we might as well be reptiles. Cognitive assessment is what allows us to avoid sitting on hot stoves in the first place. dmb replied: Its easy to confuse biological quality with dynamic quality because neither is cognitive. That is one of the biggest mistakes made by intellectuals and hippies. There have been tons of Buddhist guru types who've destroyed themselves with sex scandals. I asked Pirsig about that once and he explained in those basic terms. The guru and his student are engaged in practices that facilitate the dynamic and spontaneous modes of consciousness anyway, of course. And if it's working, everything in their lives gets shaken loose, everything starts to look especially delicious and then, Wham! They end of in bed, probably falling in love too, and sometime it gets really, really wild. I mean criminal, Krimel. [Krimel] Therapists and their patient go through the same sorts of interactions. Unlike Buddhist clergy they have professional ethical sanctions and legal considerations to keep them inline. But so what? [dmb] But more to the point, yes, all the higher forms of static quality that we are gets built up through experience and so we all have different capacities to respond to dynamic quality. [Krimel] Perhaps but not all of that experience happens within an individual's life span much of it is the genetically encoded experience of our ancestors. Our capacity to respond to Quality is inherited at birth and elaborated through individual interaction with the environment. [dmb] In the arts and sciences, for example, we aren't just responding with the gut feelings of the organism. (Unless you're a Republican.) But one can master the material in such a way that it becomes virtually invisible and yet available at any time without effort. It's just like tying your shoes, riding a bike, driving or simply walking into a room. We just do it without deliberation. Same goes for painting and physics, except they both require a longer period of training. It those cases, there is a lot more to absorb and forget but we can be just as spontaneous about it. Then, even when working out a very sophisticated problem, one can be creative, inventive and otherwise follow Quality as the task unfolds. Obviously, biological descriptions of the nervous system don't help here either, although its probably less tempting to think they would. [Krimel] All of the things you list above can be studied and have been studied in terms of biology, psychology and sociology. From Freud to Gazzaniga psychologists have looked at nonconscious processes. From Ekman to Damasio they have looked at emotions as a source of the perception of Quality. 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/
