On Apr 14, 2011, at 9:26 AM, david buchanan wrote: > > Marsha said to dmb: > Outrageous moral nightmare? Self is a static pattern, a useful illusion. > How about answering a question: tell me if for you, RMP, or the MoQ, the > sense-of-self is anything more than a persistent pattern? Please explain??? > > > dmb says: > You're asking for an explanation? I just gave you that. Twice. > > I seriously doubt that it would help to explain it a third time.
Marsha: Where? > dmb: > In fact, I've provided dozens if not hundreds of explanations and it has > never made one bit of difference. Marsha: Where is the explanation? > dmb: > Even though I often dispute your deeply confused statements and assertions, I > do not expect you to understand the objections. With a track record like > yours, such an expectation would be quite foolish. Marsha: Is this an example of your intellectual patterns expanded with care? Your track record is not so great either. > dmb: > If you were sincerely interested in comprehending the explanations I've > already provided, you'd ask a real question about that explanation. Marsha: A real question: Where is _your explanation_ of the self as presented by the MoQ? Please point to the precise words. Or are you using the 'not this, not that' strategy? > Look, I put the main point into one pithy little question. Can you deal with > one little question? Marsha: Yes. > dmb: > Do you really not see that the ridiculous fiction is the Cartesian self and > not just any conception of the self? Marsha: I wasn't addressing just any conception of the self, but the one provided in the RMP quote: ""This Cartesian 'Me,' this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. " This was the only conception of the self I was addressing. It seemed that Arlo was address ""Pirsig says" as an inherently existing self, which he is not. > dmb: > Again, Lucy, is Robert Pirsig a homunculus that somehow lives behind the > author's eyeballs and serves as a self-appointed editor of reality? If he > were, then Robert Pirsig would be a ridiculous fiction and you'd be right. Marsha: He said he didn't believe in such an entity. He said such a notion was" ridiculous" (see above). He also said such a notion was an impossible fiction: "This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines it." RMP knows he is a collection of static patterns of value, and static patterns of value are useful illusions. I believe RMP is a collection of sq within DQ. - Do you believe there is more to RMP than sq/DQ? Do you believe static patterns of value are more than provisional, useful illusions? > Maybe you should check out Alan Wallace's explanations of the self. He is a > huge fan of William James. Guy won't shut up about him and he connects > James's pure experience (DQ) with Zen Buddhism. Marsha: Yes I know Alan Wallace thinks highly of William James. Now if he thought highly of Robert Pirsig that would be worth mentioning. > > > >> On Apr 11, 2011, at 3:12 PM, david buchanan wrote: >> >>> >>> Horse said to Marsha: >>> I think Pirsig is using the term 'fiction' here in the same way that one >>> would use the term 'illusion'. An illusion is real enough in that we don't >>> have to see it as something that doesn't exist - it just doesn't exist in >>> the way we think it does. The 'I' is illusory, not fictitious. Big >>> difference. >>> >>> dmb says: >>> Right, Marsha is reading the rejection of the Cartesian conception of self >>> as a rejection of ANY conception of the self. This rejection is part of >>> rejecting subject-object metaphysics. Sometimes Pirsig calls this the >>> metaphysics of substance because Descartes had divided all of reality into >>> mental substance and physical substance. These are metaphysical posits and >>> that's what is being rejected, the notion that there is some kind of entity >>> behind thoughts and things. >>> But that doesn't mean that Robert Pirsig is a fiction. It just means that >>> he is made of the same stuff the rest of reality is made of and better >>> conceived as a complex ecology of processes rather than some essential >>> thing. Like Nietzsche and James, Pirsig is saying that there is no >>> distinction between consciousness and content, that there is no entity that >>> does the thinking or rather that the thinking itself is the thinker. When >>> we say "it rains" we don't really mean to suggest that some entity separate >>> from the rain preforms the task of raining. The rain itself is the only >>> "it". And so it is with thinking. When we say "I think", it's just a figure >>> of speech. It's just about the grammatical rules of English. >>> In James's 1904 essay titled "Does Consciousness Exist?", he answers the >>> title question in the negative. No, as an entity there is no such thing, he >>> said. Consciousness is a function, a process. Whitehead described this as a >>> direct attack on the Cartesian self. Bertrand Russell said James's essay >>> "startled the world" for the same reason. >>> >>> But to simply say that Pirsig and you and me and everyone else is just a >>> fiction not only misses the whole point of what is being rejected, it also >>> leads to a rather vacuous nihilism. One might as well say that the bombs >>> that dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima with just fictions and so were the >>> hundreds of thousand so dead. In a world of pure fiction nothing is right >>> and nothing is wrong. Shall we say that genocide and mass murder is "not >>> this and not that"? What would be the consequences if we acted as if that >>> idea were true? >>> Or, what if we read the MOQ as saying that reality - including ourselves - >>> is made of values all the way down? What if we acted as if that were true >>> instead? Should we treat the world and ourselves as static patterns of >>> VALUE or as a fiction? Do you suppose Marsha's nihilistic reading would >>> have better consequences? Not me, brother. Even if it did make sense, which >>> it doesn't, I think that reading is an outrageous moral nightmare. >>> >>> >>> 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 >> >> >> >> ___ >> >> >> 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 > > 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 ___ 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
