Krimel said to dmb:You make this extraordinarily lame point that the narrator
in ZMM is a literary devise. Perhaps but have you been reading Strauss or
something. Like the book is code and sometimes it means what it says and
sometimes it doesn't. Are we now to start looking for hidden messages and
determining that for more than half of ZMM Pirsig is talking backward talk?
dmb says:The explanation of the narrator as a literary device comes from the
introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of ZAMM, which was written by
Pirsig. He corrects two errors there. One is that "Phaedrus" doesn't mean
"wolf". It means "brilliant" or "radiant". "The second error is much more
serious because it has obscured the fundamental meaning of the book."
"The narrator is primarily a person dominated by social values. As he says at
the beginning, 'I haven't really had a new idea in years'. He never tells the
story except in ways that are calculated to make you like him. His private
thoughts he will share with you, but not with John or Sylvia or Chris or the
DeWeeses. Above all, he does not want to be isolated from you - the reader- or
from society around him. He maintains a careful position within the normal
boundaries of his surrounding society because he has see what has happened to
Phaedrus who did not. He has learned his lesson. No more shock treatment for
him. Only at one pint does the narrator confess his secret: that he is a
heretic who is congratulated by everyone for having saved his soul but who
knows secretly that all he has saved is his skin.In Phaedrus's view the
narrator is a sell out, a coward, who has abandoned truth for popularity and
social acceptance by his psychiatrists, his family, his employers, and his
social acquaintances. He sees that the narrator doesn't want to be honest
anymore, just an accepted member of the community, bowing and accommodating his
way through the rest of his years. Phaedrus was dominated by intellectual
values. He didn't give a danm who liked or didn't like him. He was
single-mindedly pursuing a truth he felt was of staggering importance to the
world..."
You call a "lame point". The author says this point has an important impact on
"the fundamental meaning of the book". Despite your haughty, mocking tones, you
could hardly be more mistaken. C'mon Krimel, if there's one thing I know how to
do it's locate textual evidence for the assertions I make. And your
condemnation of the so called "romantics" only has the effect of underscoring
your own squareness, your own inability to interpret Pirsig's art as art.
Krimel said:My point has always been that it is harder for romantics to get
with the program because their objections to classic thinking are aesthetic.
You, gav Platt and Marsha are great examples of this. Not only are your
objections to the classical view purely aesthetic, they make the use of reason
futile.
dmb says:Actually, Platt is a good example of what happens when the narrator's
cliched sentiments are mistaken for the truths of the MOQ. At this point I'll
remind you that the narrator was a classical thinker and an Aristotelian while
Phaedrus was the romantic, the Platonic Buddha seeker. As you can see from
Pirsig's explanation for the intro, the romantic character is the intellectual.
He's the one who wants to reform rationality itself, to expand rationality
beyond amoral scientific objectivity. He's not some wishy-washy artsy-fartsy
dreamer. He's such a hyper-intellectual that he wants to perform a
philosophical revolution on the whole meaning of truth and intellect. Part of
that reconstruction process involved an infusion of feeling, affect, intuition
or whatever you want to call it but to suggest that this romantic perspective
is "purely aesthetic" or that it makes "the use of reason futile" only
demonstrates your own fundamental misunderstanding of the book.
Krimel said:
For example you say this, "Human perception is reduced to transduced energy.
It's all about functioning parts." That is almost what I said and almost my
actual position but what is missing is critical. If you have been paying
attention you would notice that I have insisted all along that "sensation" is
transduction or encoding of physical energy into neural impulses. Perception is
the synthesis of the parallel process of sensation and memory. Awareness and
perception are properties that emerge from the parallel processes that give
rise to them. This is in fact what William James claims.
dmb says:Okay, you can consider the distinction between sensation and
perception to be fully acknowledged. Perception synthesizes the sensations and
so the latter is where energy transduction takes place. Now, if you would,
please explain how this is relevant to the charge of reductionism? Are you
STILL explaining human consciousness in terms of physiological processes and
the distinction between sensation and perception does not alter that fact. Not
eve a little bit. Regardless of the details, you are explaining a highly
complex non-physical phenomenon in terms of biological structures and
processes. That what reductionism means. It explains higher complex things in
terms of the lower, simpler things from which they emerged. Objecting to this
kind of reduction is not a denial that such structures and processes exist and
the anti-reductionistic does not claim they are unworthy of study. It simply
says that the higher more complex realities are qualitatively different such
that they cannot be properly explained or understood in reductionist terms. It
simply says that intellect is NOT a feature of biology. Consciousness is more
than what brains do or what brains secrete, as you and your friend Searle put
it. This is what the levels of the MOQ are about, preventing reductionist
explanations, preventing the flatten of reality into one kind of thing;
substance.
Krimel said:
What exactly do you think "pre-intellectual" means? Is this a state you think
would be desirable? Would it be desirable to be in this state all the time or
is this a sort of conscious vacation spot where one drops in for the occasional
quickie?
dmb says:
I explained what "pre-intellectual" means earlier today in a post to John that
was also directed at you. As Pirsig says in connection with the hot stove
example, "the purpose of mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from
experience but to bring one's self closer to it by eliminating stale,
confusing, static, intellectual attachments of the past". Do you think that
would be desirable, to bring yourself closer to experience? In the MOQ
experience is reality and the idea here is to bring yourself close to that,
which means your characterization of it as a "conscious vacation" is
approximately the opposite of what Pirsig is saying.
Sorry, but I think you're off. Way, way off.
_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage.
http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009
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/
