Hi DMB, > Steve said: > I was talking about the issue of language as something that ought to be > transcended--whether a pragmatist ought to agree or disagree with the mystic > who says that the fundamental nature of reality is out side of language. ... > Perhaps you could try reading it again and tell me where I get all SOM on > you. I don't see how since I was criticizing the Pirsigian notion of getting > outside language as being an SOM idea about language intervening between a > subject and an object as he did in his lens metaphor: "The culture in which > we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, > and the concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into > these glasses. If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of > glasses or, God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of > those who still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat > weird, if not actually crazy." > > I think he is using an SOM metaphor to attack SOM. What the heck could it > mean to take the glasses off? Now he sees the world as it actually is instead > of with SOM blinders? ...You are right that Rorty doesn't see any value in > the notion of getting outside language. Nor do I, but I do recognize that > Pirsig clearly does. I agree with Rorty, pace Pirsig, that the notion is > incoherent once we drop the subject-object picture. While Pirsig sees the > mystic as saying that the fundamental nature of reality is outside of > language, Rorty is saying that that notion is incoherent unless you imagine > reality in one hand, you on the other, and language as what James > sarcastically called a tertium quid intermediate between the two. ... > > > dmb says:
> First of all, please notice that the SOM glasses interpret experience, not > the world as it actually is. The idea of the world as it actually exists IS > the idea of an objective world and that is what's built right into the > glasses. It is the interpretation, not reality before it's interpreted. Steve: It is a fair correction to my attack omn the glasses metaphor when you say that what Pirsig is doing is not the same as the standard SOM lens metaphor, but I still think the SOM glasses bit (and probably every occular metaphor for knowledge) is just as problematic. You describe what's going on as reality before it is interpreted on the one hand and the interpretation on the other with the SOM lens as the tertium quid intermediate between the two. I think it amounts to pretty much the same thing as a lens intervening between a subject and an object. We still have (1) a description and (2) what is being described as well as some third thing standing in the way of making good descriptions. The following is better since it at least drops the third thing: Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can be described is a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the definitions emerge they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts it. (RMP from LC) Steve: I think it is good that you hint at talking about experience as interpretation and Pirsig in the above also does well to talk about experience as a process of interpretation (or definition or description). But when we are asked what it is that is being described we should hear the sound of one hand clapping. Any answer would not be the answer. The next best thing to not answerring at all would be to just offer up some concept of conceptual emptiness (DQ) which Pirsig would admit is just one more interpretation and the advice to unask the question at best. Pirsig noted that from a mystic's perspective it is a bad question--that it would be best to keep quiet--and then he gives an answer anyway. By identifying his philosophy with mysticism, he is stuck in this paradox. So why identify with mysticism? The mystic reality is no better than the objective one as far as the problem that the positing of a reality that is beyond description is to offer a description of it as being beyond description. And at the same time, it is not beyond description because it is the only thing that is ever described. So Pirsig says that "one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable." At that point in one's understanding of the MOQ, isn't it better to say nothing at all about DQ? DMB: As you've construed it, we take off those SOM glasses and find ourselves looking at.... (wait for it, wait for it --- dramatic pause) ...the exact same thing we saw before we took off the glasses. I think it's pretty clear that this would be absurd. The whole point of taking off those glasses is to see things differently, of course, and that's where the next point comes in. Steve: My view isn't that we take the glasses off and see exactly the same thing. My views is that there ought not be three separate terms here. Taking off the glasses ought to be an incoherent notion in Pirsig's metaphor if here is no Cartesian subject to be wearing the glasses. The subject is a collection of patterns of preferences and the glasses then are part of that collection of patterns. A person doesn't take them off and SEE something new. The person IS something new. And this person taking off the glasses who has just rid herself of a particular collection of patterns of preferences is not now free from all patterns of preference. The person IS patterns of preferences. One pattern of preferences gets replaced by another hopefully better one. Removing all patterns of preferences (taking off all of our glasses) would be to unpeal an onion to the point where there is no human being left. DMB: > The trick to understanding the MOQ is in understanding what it actually means > to claim that the fundamental reality is outside language. Steve: Why do you always take me to be not understanding when I am disagreeing? I do understand the MOQ and I know Pirsig's philosophy includes the notion that the fundamental reality is outside reality. I am saying that Pirsig was wrong--that he would have done better to not associate enlightenment with the notion of transcendence of language. DMB: The first thing to do is tell yourself that this fundamental reality is NOT the objective reality, is NOT the world as it actually is....The fundamental reality he's talking about is DQ or pure experience. This is NOT a claim to have direct access to the world as it actually is because, again, that just an idea that's derived from experience, a conceptual interpretation of experience. The primary empirical reality is just experience itself, not experience OF things-in-themselves. Steve: Yep, I understand all that to be what Pirsig is saying. Now, how exactly is it possible to be unenlightened in the sense of being out of touch with reality if reality is experience itself? What in this simple experience=reality picture needs to be transcended? Since we can never be out of touch with reality, then our only philosphical problem is a need for better descriptions. All transcendence in terms of language can mean is to bring some new good description into the world, and all that enlightenment can mean is the state of having really good interpretations that can easily be dropped when better ones become available. DMB: In the MOQ, there are no things-in-themselves because, again, that is just one of the ideas built into the SOM glasses. Instead, the cutting edge of experience is not so much "outside" language as it is "prior" to the conceptualizations that quickly and habitually interpret it. In this immediate flux of life there are as yet no differentiations. The whole situation has a qualitative feel or an aesthetic charge, as in the hot stove example. By the time you realize the situation in terms of stoves and injured butts, you're looking at the situation through conceptualizations. These two kinds of experience, conceptual and pre-conceptual, work in tandem all day long whether we realize it or not. Steve: So instead of outside/inside you are now preferring a distinction between the past and the present. And the SOM glasses are part of the present. Everything happens in the present--even refection on the past. You say that "In this immediate flux of life there are as yet no differentiations." Well then when do differentiations occur if not in some later Now? Nothing ever happens that doesn't happen in the immediate flux of life. DMB: ...The case of Jill Bolte Taylor makes a similar point from the opposite direction. She was a brain scientist who has a stroke and lost the use of her rational, verbal hemisphere and could only experience reality as a whole, so much so > that she could not tell where she ended and the universe began. She now says > that what she experienced was Nirvana and she cries tears of joy when she > tells the story. We can think about this pure experience or undifferentiated > experience in terms of the lack of distinction between subject and object but > it is a lack of all distinctions. To fully realize this lack of division is > to be enlightened. That's the fundamental reality that Pirsig is talking > about. That's what the primary empirical reality is. Traditional empiricist > and especially positivists would never touch this, not even with a ten-foot > pole. Steve: I don't know what to make of these "tears of joy." You've sketched enlightenment as a form of brain damage here. You talk of fully realizing the lack of all distinctions as though that's how things REALLY are and all dictinctions are illusion--that this primary reality is what is really real. You know James studies this kind of stuff in detail (if you've read Varieties) and never jumped to these sorts of metaphysical conclusions. > Steve said: > ... Trying to compare language to something else that is outside of language > is in this analogy an attempt to step out of your own skin. Why would anyone > who has already dropped the correspondence notion even think of trying to do > that? > > > dmb says: > The primary empirical reality is undifferentiated awareness, it's the reality > you experience before you have a chance to think about it. Steve: You've just excluded thinking from emprical reality. DMB: ...Anyway, I don't know who is trying to compare language to what's outside language but the mystics and Pirsig will tell you that it can't be done. Steve: Pirsig says it can't be done because language is not adequate to representing reality. That is an SOM notion that ought to be discarded. Language doesn't fail to represent reality when language doesn't represent at all--when all we have are static patterns of value and dynamic change. We have interpretations (static patterns) and the ability to create new and better descriptions (DQ). We can say what we ought to say about language using such notions of static and dynamic quality without positing some mystical realm or state that language keeps us from accessing. Best, Steve 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/md/archives.html
