Hello everyone On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 2:07 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dan said to dmb: > > ..And now I feel we need to grow the discussion into the idealistic side... > the ghosts of reason: > > "Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of > mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing > is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The > world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a > ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world > we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show > it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and > Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac > Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing > more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the > past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the > living.'' [ZMM] > > Dan comments: > > The MOQ states these ghosts are social and intellectual patterns that make up > the mythos of our 21st century culture. These were the patterns (I think) > that the discussion Matt and I were having was focusing upon... the > philosophic idealism side of the MOQ and how one defends it against the > critics who say: the MOQ is solipsistic. If there is a better way to do that, > I would love to hear it. So far, all I've heard is we're supposed to suspend > disbelief and assume the patterns of value we discuss like dog dishes and > trees falling in forests are real just because someone says so. I don't think > that's right. > > > dmb says: > > There are different kinds of idealism but I suppose the kind most likely to > result in solipsism would be subjective idealism. If one is skeptical enough > to doubt the existence of everything except for one's own doubting mind, as > Descartes did before he was rescued by God's benevolence, then solipsism is > going to be a very tempting conclusion. But Pirsig points out that Descartes > could think and doubt because he was part of the French language and culture, > only because he could hear the voices of thousands of ghosts from the past. > To say we are suspended in language or to say that the culture hands us a > pair of glasses with which we interpret experience or to say we can't escape > from the mythos are different ways of saying the whole blessed world is run > by ghosts. The kind of subjective idealism that would lead to solipsism > (wherein there is nothing real outside of the individual's subjective > experience) is not going to be consistent with the historic and public nature > of thought and language.
Dan: So what are you saying here? Is the whole world run by ghosts? Or is history and the public nature of thought and language a physical reality? How you answer these questions depends (I suppose) upon how you define "ghosts" and whether (or not) you believe an external, eternal reality exists apart from the experience of it. >dmb: > Objective idealism and absolute idealism, as represented by Plato and Hegel, > both get rejected as something that could be confused with what Pirsig is > saying. Plato's Good was taken from the Sophists and converted into an > eternal fixed Form or Idea. That's why they seemed to be saying the same > thing up to a certain point. In ZAMM Pirsig tells us that Hegel's Absolute > Mind was thoroughly rational but Quality isn't like that. In Lila, as he is > identifying the MOQ as a form of pragmatism, he tells us that Quality is not > some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. Thanks to McWatt, we also see > Pirsig's (mostly negative) reaction to Bradley's brand of Idealism in the > Copleston annotations. It's also worth pointing out that pragmatism was > largely a reaction against that kind of Idealism. James's radical empiricism > more or less ruled it out and Dewey did a pretty good job of naturalizing > everything on a Darwinian model, including rationality. Dan: "James made no concerted attempt to show or prove that the principle of pragmatism was correct. In his lectures, he put it into practice, solving problems about squirrels, telling us the meaning of truth, explaining how we can understand propositions about human freedom or about religious matters. But in the end, inspired by these applications, we are encouraged to adopt the maxim and see how well things work out when we do so." (SEP http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/) Dan comments: This is what I see you doing by sweeping away such questions as: is there a sound when a forest with no one around and does Don's dog dish exist when he walks out of the room. You're in effect telling us (like James) that high quality intellectual patterns work well in the real world so we should forget about questioning them. We should just take them for granted. I don't like that, though. That doesn't seem like philosophy to me... it seems more like giving in... >dmb: > But if we take "idealism" in the broadest sense then I think it just means a > view that consciousness in the broadest sense is a fundamental feature of > reality. This fits with the MOQ's assertion that even atoms can express > preferences, that value goes all the way down from chemistry professors to > quantum events. This picture produces a kind of panpsychism wherein, as James > puts it, "mind" and "matter are co-eternal features of the same reality. On > this view, consciousness didn't emerge at some point in the evolutionary > development of the physical universe. Instead, consciousness was never > entirely absent and has always been involved in the evolutionary process. I > think the MOQ is a form of idealism in this sense. Dan: I think the MOQ sees inorganic and biological patterns of quality as the materialistic (object) side of metaphysics and sees social and intellectual pattens of quality as the idealistic (subjective) side of metaphysics. The MOQ states that experience and Dynamic Quality are seen as synonymous... ideas come first... they grow from Dynamic Quality and inform us as to the material aspects of reality, not the other way around. When the MOQ asserts that atoms can express preferences it is saying atoms begin as ideas, not as "things" apart from Dynamic experience. Reality is not eternal. It begins with experience. I have a feeling this discussion would not be taking place if we agreed on that. >dmb: > As I see it, the following quote strikes a blow against subjective idealism, > the kind that can so easily lead to relativism and solipsism. > > "What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this > world is COMMON to us with other thinking beings. Through the COMMUNications > that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious > reasonings [the mythos]. ..And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of > our sensations [the primary empirical reality], we think we may infer that > these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we > know we haven't been dreaming. It is this HARMONY, this QUALITY if you will, > that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know." Dan: Not sure where this quote is from but it smacks of objectivity. They are saying because we as thinking beings agree on a commonality that it must be real and true. This goes against the grain of the MOQ... it leaves out the cultural lenses through which "thinking beings" view reality. Remember the green flash of the sun that Phaedrus never saw until he read about it and looked? Or the Cleveland Harbor effect? The only notion this quote tends to support is the idea that there is a real world "out there" that all thinking beings agree upon, period. >dmb: > We find an explicit rejection of both subjective and objective idealism, and > an assertion of Quality instead, in chapter 29 of ZAMM: > > "Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. > Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists and > materialists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a > relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the > creation of all things. The measure of all things..." That's what I mean by > invoking James's slogan that "we carve out everything". Dan: Exactly... and notice how different this quote is from the above... man is not the passive observer of all things... he participates in creating the world... not by forming agreements with others but by the measure of experience. The world begins and ends with experience. >dmb: > "...We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, > language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these > analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the > name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does > not accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that which causes us to > invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our > environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. > Every last bit of it. ...The mythos is a building of analogues upon > analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all > communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that > directs the train." Dan: Have you really read this passage, Dave? Do you see what RMP is saying here? Note the sentence: "We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality." This is what I've been saying to you all along about dog dishes and trees falling in forests... we presuppose such notions and then believe they are real. And anyone who dares question these presuppositions are judged as fools (notice Ron's post to me) or worse, insane. We invent the notion that the history of the world has been around long before we have and it will continue to be around long after we're gone. And we firmly believe that notion. That is one of Matts' questions that started this inquiry... how do we distinguish personal evolution from the reality known as the history of the world? Here, RMP is saying there is no distinction... it is invented. >dmb: > The collective nature of the analogues stands out pretty clearly in each of > these passages. We see "the objectivity of the world" construed as a harmony > between our own sensations and the ready-made reasonings inherited from the > past and we see reality as we know it as a pile of invented analogues, as the > voice of thousands of ghosts but those inventions were produced in response > to Quality, were guided on the track of the primary empirical reality. That's > what I mean by invoking James's view that ideas are supposed to be "married" > to empirical reality, which is to say they are derived from experience and > their purpose is to operate within experience. Dan: If "we" see the objectivity of the world in harmony with our sensations and ready-made reasoning inherited from the past we are presupposing "ready-made reasoning" as something distinct and apart from us. That is what Robert Pirsig calls a hypothesis contrary to fact. It is a high quality idea that this ready-made reasoning existed before we were aware of it but it is only an idea. >dmb: > Like Pirsig, he also make a pretty big deal out of the fact that we've > inherited a big pile of harmonious reasonings. Despite the fact that they are > human inventions, we can't treat them arbitrarily or dismiss them with > caprice. If you think that you can think outside of the mythos, Pirsig tells > us, then you don't understand with the mythos is. I mean, for an idea to be > true in the pragmatic sense it has to operate successfully in experience and > that success is going to depend in large part on its harmonious fit with the > inherited order of the mythos (even if it has been transformed into logos). > In other words, ideas that can't be understand by others within the mythos > are going to be very bad and very unsuccessful ideas. The pragmatic truth, > James said, is wedged between and controlled by those two factors, the > experiential flux and the conceptual order, which is like the track of > Quality and the box cars full of concepts. Dan: No one is saying we should dismiss harmonious reasoning, least of all me. What I'm saying is that harmonious reasoning cannot exist apart from experience. It comes into being when we "discover" it. It is not floating around waiting to be discovered, though. Like gravity, it didn't exist before the experience of it. That sounds very odd, I know. And it isn't the normal way of thinking about things. But it is the only conclusion that a value-centered reality leads us to. >dmb: > It would be interesting to see somebody make a case that the MOQ results in > solipsism. I think it would be fun and edifying to argue against such a case > in detail. What I've done here is paint with broad strokes against a vague > suggestion that the MOQ could or might be taken that way by critics. I > imagine that any such critic would have to be misreading the MOQ to draw such > a conclusion. At this point, the charge seems very implausible. I mean, I > wonder if there is a legitimate case to be made, one that's not leveled by > hoaxters, cranks or air-heads. I suppose it's possible but I'm very skeptical. Dan: I'm not about to take up arms against the MOQ. But there have been a number of contributors to the discussion over the years who have criticized RMP for idealistic tendencies. In fairness, these questions should be answered, not shrugged off. Thank you, Dan 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
