Ron replied to dmb:
Experience, whether verbal or non-verbal is predicated on meaning. The main
point Aristotle makes. Meaning is largely culturally defined. Thus he
maintained how we understand experience is largely culturally defined.
Experience, for Aristotle was based on limit through limit unity through unity
understanding, so the understanding of experience is through complex relations
of very broad generalizations of meaning. I think that's the best any
Pragmatist can say about it.
dmb says:
Well, no. There's no such thing as non-verbal meaning or non-verbal
understanding. Generalizations are concepts and culturally defined meanings are
on the static side and are contrasted with the dynamic side.
Ron:
I respectfully beg to differ..I fear you neglect visual symbology, which...is
non verbal.. such things
as classic art..familier forms...color for instance...classic music...the
source of mirage...
camoflage,....body language.. there is a world of non-verbal meaning...so I
can't agree just as yet.
As far as generalizations go, thats a big one. Cullturally defined meanings are
not only verbal, there
is a myrid of body language and cultural cues ..
Ron continued:
I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that Dynamic Quality is non verbal,
it's too broad a generalization that supports a correspondance viewpoint.
Dynamic Quality as I understand the term, means the plural, the unrecognizable,
the defiance of understanding, the unlimited, flux, ect...
dmb says:
Well, no. Radical empiricism is all about rejecting the correspondence theory
of truth (wherein truth is defined as the subjective understanding matches the
objective reality). "By this he (James) meant that subjects and objects are not
the starting points of experience.
Ron:
But it is suggested that pure experience is the foundation for truth, that
truth corresponds
with experience, some forward the idea that even experience is culturally
colored
and filtered, having blindspots..distortions.
Dmb:
Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something
more fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which
furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.'
In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, as as
those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter,
have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot be
called either physical or psychical; it logically precedes this distinction. In
his last unfinished work, SOME PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, James had condensed this
description to a single sentence: 'There must always be a discrepancy between
concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the
latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words
Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the MOQ." (Lila, chapter 29)
Ron responds:
I ask if such a pure experience is possible, what makes patterns distinct is
static memory of those forms
in fact it's the formation of cultural patterns and distinctions which shapes
what we see and value in general
as a whole in this pure experience James describes. Thus it is indeed NOT the
Pure stimuli supposed.
For such pure stimuli must be interpreted for meaning to arise..and that
interpretation is dominated by culture.
The story about the green sun...in lila for instance...certain tribes not
having a word for yellow..
cultural blindess....
Ron said:
The Greeks had it together, Elenchus demonstrated how language is reduced to
such broad generalizations of meaning in experience. Pirsig, in my opinion
improves apon the whole Pragmatic enterprise with the division of the good into
four types. These four types of Pragmatic truths often conflict, but when they
support eachother in conflict or in harmony, we call it "true" in the general
meaning of the term. To me "Pragmatic truth" is to understand what we mean
when we term something as good or true and how we arrive at those meanings.
dmb says:
The pragmatic theory of truth and radical empiricism with its doctrine of pure
experience go together quite nicely but they are two different things. The
theory of truth is about what's good in the way of intellectual patterns. But
otherwise I think you're right. By introducing the distinction between social
patterns and intellectual patterns, this theory of truth avoids the problem of
endorsing truth as naked satisfaction of one's desires or the naked
satisfaction of a particular ethnocentric perspective. The social-intellectual
distinction prevents pragmatism from being used to support Nazism and other
forms of crass self interest. This theory is about static patterns, not DQ or
pure experience. "The idea that satisfaction alone is the test of anything is
very dangerous, according to the MOQ. There are different kinds of satisfaction
and some of them are moral nightmares. The Holocaust produced a satisfaction
among Nazis. That was quality for them.
They considered it to be practical. But it was a quality dictated by low level
static social and biologic al paterns whose overall purpose was to retard the
evolution of truth and DQ" (ch. 29)
Ron:
I'm glad you can see how Pirsig helps clarify the arguements between the
different
schools of Pragmatism, it was what I had in mind when I was explaining how I
thought the term relativist and relativism was a term used for the conflict
between two levels of truth .
Ron said:
To recap, I feel to condemn the "we're suspended in language" as mere words
divorced of experiential meaning is overlooking how natural languages form the
understanding of immediate experiences, that even the most raw response of
stimuli is an understanding of experience based in memory of one sort or
another. Value requires it.
dmb says:
Not sure I understand what you mean here but I can tell you that these
doctrines do not condemn the notion that "we're suspended in language".
Unlike most forms of contextualism, however, the classical pragmatists insist
that our contexts (our particular conceptual categories) are derived from
something more fundamental. That's where value fits into it. "What the MOQ adds
to James' pragmatism and his radical empiricism is the idea that the primal
reality from which subjects and objects spring is VALUE. By doing so it seems
to untie pragmatism and radical empiricism into a single fabric. Value, the
pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical experience. The MOQ says
pure experience is value. Experience which is not valued is not experienced.
The two are the same. This is where value fits. Value is not at the tail-end of
a series of superficial scientific deductions that puts it somewhere in a
mysterious undetermined location in the cortex of the brain. [Booo!] Value is
at the very front of the empirical procession. [Hurray!]" (ch 29)
Ron:
I think it's important to remember that the value Pirsig speaks of is
pre-intellectual,
That can be taken that to mean dominated by social patterns of value.
I guess I have trouble agreeing with a universal foundation for truth that is'nt
colored by social level patterns of value. The way VALUE is used above, suggests
a universal fundemental reality that we experience purely before social/
intellectual
values are imposed. Value is at the front of the procession, but it is hardly
a bottom for truth, it extends biologically and inorganically. Value as the test
of the true speaks more about four levels of "true."
DmB:
But let me back up a little and say something about this idea that we're
suspended in language. Let me give you some context here. Broadly speaking,
this idea is what separates modernism from postmodernism. (I hope that the
Rorty fans are paying attention here because I think this is the at the heart
of where they go wrong.) According to Rorty, "the failure of the positivistic
project is central in such a way that it changes everything about philosophy"
and "the linguistic turn is the greatest thing to ever happen to philosophy".
As you probably already know, the positivists represent the purest form of SOM
and their project was predicated on the correspondence theory of truth. They
were empiricists of a very different kind than is James, Dewey and Pirsig. The
positivists thought subjects and objects were the starting points of experience
and so radical empiricism is an explicit rejection of their basic metaphysical
assumptions. The positivists were
thoroughgoing realists who thought that objective reality was given to us
through the five senses.
Ron:
Is'nt that whats being suggest by "pure experience"? the interpretation
of verbal truths correspodance with dynamic experience?
Dmb:
Rorty's fondness for the linguistic turn expresses the great insight of
postmodernism that reality is not simply given to us but is instead a system of
socially constructed conceptual categories. That, in a nutshell, is
contextualism. And the conclusion usually drawn here is that "true" is only
ever true within a context and we can never use objective reality to support
our truths because we can't ever have access to such a thing.
ron:
He does have a point.
DmB:
I think it was Ken Wilber who said Rorty replaces subjectless objectivity with
objectless subjectivity, resulting in a kind of intellectually paralyzing
relativism.
Ron:
Objectivly speaking of course..
DmB:
It's a kind of linguistic idealism wherein our conceptual understandings can
never be justified by experience.
Ron:
Sure it can, for the the test of the true is it's value or meaning, whether
inorganic,
organic, social, or intellectual.
DmB:
The tricky thing here is that he understands "experience" in terms of
traditional empiricism, in terms of what the positivists meant by it. He's
right to
reject that. All the pragmatist have that in common and this definitely
includes radical empiricism, which employs the term "experience" in a
completely different way than the positivist. James and Pirsig criticize them
for not being empirical enough whereas Rorty rejects empiricism altogether.
That's why he says, "my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties
into which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything over
from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics". As Ramberg puts it,
"Epistemology, in Rorty's account, is wedded to a picture of mind's structure
working on empirical content to produce in itself items—thoughts,
representations—which, when things go well, correctly mirror reality." In other
words, for Rorty, epistemology is WEDDED to the correspondence theory of truth
so that when you get rid of SOM you automatically get rid of epistemology and
simply abandon all truth theories. This is what I
like to call all-or-nothing-ism. By contrast, radical empiricism is a
reconstructed epistemology and pragmatism is a theory of truth, both of which
are predicated on the rejection or traditional empiricism and a rejection of
the correspondence theory of truth. Or, to put it very simply, the classical
pragmatists reform epistemology whereas Rorty simply abandons epistemology.
This is why the Rorty fans are so confused about radical empiricism and the
pragmatic theory of truth.
Ron:
I understand now. Because ultimately, Pragmatism is nothing if it is'nt
epistemological
Therefore Rorty is an influentual character in the understanding of the
reformation
of epistomology, "pure experience" then, is an epistimological point of
beginning.
An epistimological first principle. In fact it takes redefining the term
"empirical"
from an ontological point of view to an epistomological one..
DmB:
Why do they supposed that a non-positivistic concept of "truth" or "experience"
is impossible? That's something you'll have to ask Steve or Matt because it
makes no sense to me. As I understand it, that's like saying that horses are an
obsolete mode of transportation therefore there is no such thing as a mode of
transportation. It simply doesn't follow. It's an invalid inference.
Ron:
I think within a positivistic ontological context it's believed to be
impossible, but thats within
that context. Thanks for taking the time to explain all that, it really helped.
Also it really
illumenates Pirsigs contribution to the school of Pragmatism.
Thanks Dave,
Ron
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