dmb: Try to persuade you?! Dude, I just dished up a pile of evidence but you
have not said anything about it. Why are you not persuaded by the
explanation I already gave or by the quotes from Pirsig and McWatt, etc.?
DM: Because they are clearly not conclusive, yes they go close to saying
what you claim but they do not say it. I think your conclusion that all SQ
is conceptual goes too far. I believe I understand why you make this step
and that there are some advantages to it, but I think the I see
disadvantages outweigh it. Even if the quotes were conclusive I would then
argue this step is an error and was not a step clearly taken in Lila. I have
no objection to the step being taken if it was an improvement on Lila, you
are right to look at building on Lila and Lila needs to be built on, and it
needs to be shown how MOQ can relate to and intervene in the wider
philosophical debate, but I think there is a better way forward in the MOQ
direction, in the non-SOM direction, and that is to see that whilst we have
to begin with experience, we can refer to pre-conceptual SQ that we can
recognise in experience, this is a perfectly coherent suggestion I am making
about how to make sense of a non-SOM and non-dualistic understanding of
experience, one that I think is better able to engage and intervene in
current mainstream philosophy to get people seeing a pre-SOM understanding
of experience that can make good sense of both experience and the world
beyond experience that experience allows us to recognise, SOM also allows us
to recognise the larger world but introduces the objective versus subjective
dilemma that is so problematic. Now this is a very simple proposal, it is
simply yes there is pre-conceptual SQ that we can experience contrasted to
your all SQ is conceptual version (by the way is all SQ therefore impossible
without language and culture in your view or are you using conceptual in
some strange and over-extended way? Please answer this question if it is not
too awkward for the weaknesses in your position). Now where you start saying
my proposal is incoherent or makes no sense or is really a version of SOM,
this to me looks like cowardice, defensiveness, evasion or fear, of course
it may be stupidity, but I prefer to assume not. I have no problem
understanding what you are saying and why, I even see the advantages, but
the disadvantages are too great for me. If there are disadvantages in my
suggestion I would be glad to hear them, but you seem to prefer evasion,
which is a shame dude. Two examples of advantage from me: Firstly, look at
the Galen Strawson essay I posted this week, it proposed that naturalism, a
doctrine most philosophers espouse, is at fault that it promotes physicalism
whilst ignoring the most naturalistic element of all reality, that reality
is inescapably experiencial, this should be at the heart of any true
naturalism that can only more on to explore what physics is able to tell us
about reality in this fundamental experiential context. This opens a very
useful door for MOQ and its basis in experience, but it goes on to give a
key role to physics and its study of patterns. Now I think an MOQ with
pre-conceptual SQ rooted in experience can engage in this conversation and
engage with a revised naturalism as proposed by Galen Strawson, but a
non-realist and idealistic MOQ, as I see your version is very unlikely to be
able to do this. The other opportunity I see in the wider philosophical
world, you should really get out more dude, is the new materialism or
speculative realist debate, here people like Paul Levi Bryant are suggesting
we need to stop all talk of dualistic subjectivity and objectivity, and
adopt a flat ontology, that fits well with how anti-dualism and SQ is
understood in the MOQ, but it fails to put experience at its centre, instead
a move is made to rethinkg materialism and allow objects to possess all the
qualities that MOQ highlights in experience. Now an MOQ with pre-conceptual
SQ, realist SQ that gives a realist flat ontology can engage with this sort
of speculative realism, an MOQ where all experience is exclusively DQ until
a rather idealist form of conceptual SQ is brought into being is never going
to engage with the realism, naturalism and new materialism that is the best
sort of thought there is in the current mainstream, current that are
challenging dualism, but are missing the depth of understanding of DQ that
Pirsig and MOQ can offer. If MOQ goes your way it goes so far from the
mainstream I fear it is going to be lost and forgotten. Now that is my
motivation, I look out at the wider world and propose non-conceptual SQ to
save the MOQ from obscurity and marginalisation. Now if this proposal is
adopted what do we lose? I do not see that this approach diminished DQ and
its centrality, but ignoring this proposal takes MOQ towards anti-realism
and idealism and I think these are dead ends. The only advantage of "all SQ
is conceptual" is that this allows you to defend your position as some sort
of ultimate retreat from SOM, there is only DQ and ideas, but is this a sort
of inverse physicalism? -instead of there is only matter and an add on
called culture/ideas/mind, you drop the matter and get back to a sort of
flux coloured idealism. DQ plus SQ ideas? Sure this is clever, and easy to
defend, but I find it less challenging to orthodoxy and less radical and
easily dismissed as just idealism over again. Now if you have some good
reasons for your view other than Any says this or Pirsig says this, some
actual intellectual reasons or values that you think your version delivers
and mine does not then please let us hear them. If you want to say you are
confused, or it is not logical, or this is just a return to SOM, or this is
not coherent, save it as I have heard all that evasion a thousand times
already.
DMB said: And I'm familiar with the thought experiment but I fail to see the
relevance, especially the way you've misconstrued it. The experiment is
suppose to highlight the difference between experience as such and our
conceptual understandings. So we are supposed to imagine a person who has
never seen color. Mary is an expert and knows everything there is to know
about color and yet she lives in a black and white and has never actually
seen any color. So the question is, when she steps out of her black and
white world for the first time and sees color, does she "know" something
new? Has she learned something from experience that she could not get from
words and concepts. There are arguments to the contrary, but the thought
experiment was invented to illustrate a certain inadequacy of conceptual
knowledge. It was invented to make a point in a long-running debate about
the status of "qualia", as the philosophers call it.
DM: Yes as usual I know all that, you never fail to state the obvious and
miss the point. My point is given this standard thought experiment how would
you describe what happens when the girl first experiences colour for the
first time, I think explaining this event in MOQ terms requires
pre-conceptual SQ, how would you describe it without pre-conceoptual SQ, I
think that is impossible, but would be delighted to be proved wrong if you
can give up the evasion and offer such a description, come on you can do
better than this dude, if you actually risk engaging with the issues here
you never know you might persuade me you are right, but go for evasion if
you prefer, no skin off my nose. Of course you could accuse me of evasion
instead, I'll let others judge who is really the most evasive if you adopt
that tactic once again.
DMB said: But, David, you are exposing a conceptual error about the MOQ's
terms when you say "she experiences a new pattern, the SQ of colour". If you
use the terms "experience" and "static patterns" as they are used in the
textual evidence below, that statement is totally incoherent.
DM: Here we go evasion time, I stated quite clearly I am challenging the 'SQ
is all conceptual' belief or proposal, it is a bad idea, it losses too much
and adds too little, I prefer to keep pre-conceptual SQ, now if that is a
bad idea, let's hear why, I am all ears if you have good reasons.
DMB: It can't make any sense. It's like saying "she experiences a new
pattern of unpatterned Quality". According to SOM, tomatoes and the color
red are not just concepts, they are mistakenly believed to be physical
realities that are also conceptualized. In the MOQ, all objects are just
concepts.
DM: Evasion as usual plus the old you are an SOMist accusation, nothing
SOMist about pre-conceptual SQ, or experienced patterns, this implies
nothing about physicality, it is pure experience, but you think all
experience is unpatterned DQ, fine but there is value to be had from
accepting pre-object, pre-conceptual patterns in experience, it allows there
to be an evolution from simple patterned experiences to the full complexity
of making sense of these patterns via culture and concepts, it also allows
us to understand how our bodies evolve and handle pattern recognition long
before culture and concepts come along, if you ignore all patterns before
concepts, how in your version of MOQ can you make any sense of evolution,
life and experience prior to language, concepts and culture, of course you
can adopt the idealist position that none of these processes 'existed' until
recognised conceptually but this is an idealist and anti-realist dead end
the MOQ takes at the risk of becoming so irrelevant.
DMB: LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE! You might not understand it and even if you do
understand it, you don't have to accept it. But we're talking about Pirsig's
meaning, right? If we want to know what Pirsig says about static patterns,
you have to honestly examine the evidence. And we can put this next to other
kinds of evidence, namely the meaning of static concepts as it's understood
by a Pirsig scholar, a Buddhist scholar and the pragmatist that Pirsig
quotes on this same topic. If you sincerely want to discuss what has been
asserted here, why would you say nothing about it?
DM: I am not evasive like you, I see it, I understand it, I accept it moves
very close to what you are proposing, but it does not go all the way and is
contradicted in places where there seems to be room for pre-conceptual SQ,
and even if it did I am suggesting reasons why it is a miss step and a dead
end, and what I would like but do not get from you is why there are good
reasons for banning pre-conceptual SQ from the MOQ, or what advantages there
are to only having conceptual SQ. Sure all patterns imply some sort of
comparative, but we regularly compare things in our experience that are
right there unavoidably, a tree is full of branches, the branches resemble
each other, such is SQ, the branches differ from each other, such is DQ, no
concepts required at the most basic level, only when we come to think deeper
about this SQ and DQ or wish to talk about these experiences. I see no
problem with such simple pre-conceptual SQ, with babies recognising faces
before they can even speak. I have asked how babies recognise faces without
conceptual SQ before, to date you have evaded this question that does not
fit your position in my opinion, going to take up the challenge at last or
evade it once again?
DMB said: The thought experiment is a very confusing way to frame questions
about the MOQ because it implicitly contains the assumptions of SOM.
DM: Pure evasion, yes the experiment is described using SOM concepts, the
challenge -given you can understand the outline of the experiment- is to
describe what is happening without pre-conceptual SQ, my challenge and fear
is that an experiment that can be though in SOM or with pre-conceptual SQ
cannot be thought or described by an MOQ devoid of pre-conceptual MOQ, which
I suggest shows that it cannot handle a situation that could clearly occur
in experience, a terrible failure, you seem to recognise this failure
because you evade seeing it or trying to genuinely resolving it.
DMB said: It's designed to assert the importance of subjectivity against the
assumption that objective knowledge is the only that counts. That kind of
question doesn't make any sense in the MOQ because it rejects objectivity
and the "experience" it talks about is not subjective. As the quotes s how,
experience is prior to subjects and objects.
DM: Boring and obvious, yes MOQ helps to overcome the issue in this
experiment because experience is prior to subjects and objects, you really
should learn to accept where our common ground lies, theMOQ has few enough
friends, but how can we describe the introduction of colour in this
experiment, the girl with the concepts of colour has no experience of
colour, I say she comes to enjoy the pre-conceptual experience of colour
when the tomato enters the room, how do you describe what happens in terms
of conceptual SQ alone? You can try to avoid the proposition the tomato
enters the room as incoherent, but that is evasion at its worst is it not?
DMB: Oh, and I honestly have no idea what that first sentence of yours is
supposed to mean.
DM: Evasion or stupidity, can't help you with either I am afraid, by the way
I understand everything you have said, no evasion or pretend stupidity on my
part.
DMB said:What reason does anyone have to think that static patterns are
anything other than the concepts derived from experience?
DM: I give you pre-language babies recognise faces, please explain this with
something better than pre-conceptual SQ. Sure once you get language and
concepts there will dominate everything, but we need pre-conceptual SQ
(prior to all SOM concepts too) to make sense of concepts I believe.
DMB said: They are called analogies, ghosts, static patterns, forms of this
world, etc and in every case they are contrasted with reality, which is just
pre-conceptual experience. That's why its called ever-changning,
unpatterned, undivided, pre-intellectual, and Dynamic.
DM: I say yes pre-conceptual, yes dominated by flux and change, yes
pre-intellectual, but there are SQ patterns here too in experience, look
down at your hands, you have 2 the same, hard not to notice this before all
language and concepts I'd suggest, sure this is sort of proto-conceptual, we
have to recognise a link, a similarity between the 2 hands to have an SQ
experience, but truly conceptual, I say no.
DMB: It's a radical shift in basic ontological assumptions and yet the idea
is really quite simple.
DM: Problem is too simple and does not agree with experience, just look at
all those fingers on your hand, pure SQ.
DMB said: Reality is not conceptual and concepts are not reality.
DM: Too much like idealism, I prefer concepts are a higher form of SQ, real
but at a level above pre-conceptual SQ,
there is inanimate SQ, animate and living SQ, cultural and conceptual SQ,
all real, some pre-conceptual and cultural,
some not.
Reality is flowing and undivided but words chop it up and concepts are
divisions.
DM: Yes but two fingers together being experienced have a joined up pattern,
they stand out in experience
due to their SQ, they stand out from the flux, we add further SQ to this
with concepts and make the division
from the flux more fixed and abstract, but there is clearly an experience
that is had prior to the move to
conceptualise and speak of these patterns.
The analytic knife cuts it up well or badly. And these divisions and
categories are so well carved that we mistake them for reality itself.
That's what SOM does to subjects and objects. That's what scientists do to
gravity and causality. These dialectician don't know that these are just
analogies and they don't know that everything is just an analogy.
DM: Your view suggests that we are capable of not spotting that we have
hands, we might carve up experience and ignore the experiencial reality of
similarity between hands, this is both laughable and is anti-realist
absudity.
The MOQ is one giant anti-reification program. DQ reality isn't nothingness.
It is no-thing-ness. Why? Because DQ is preconceptual and all "things" are
concepts. It seems that you and Marsha want there to be DQ, sq, AND also
things like tomatoes and wooden ships.
DM: No just DQ and SQ in immediate experience, obviously we go on to have
concepts and names and call some patterns ships or tomatoes, we can then
imagine that when we turn our
backs these patterns still exist, you seem to want to imagine they cease to
exist when you turn your back to stick with idealist anti-realism, I also
adopt a flat ontology of SQ so that all patterns are real at all levels to
avoid naive materialism or physicalsim
That is some weird mixture wherein the metaphysics of substance is being
blended with Pirsig's replacement for the metaphysics of substance.
DM: I agree please stop suggesting it is my view, stick to SQ and patterns
please. Dropping the metaphysics of substance is so much wider than Pirsig,
you should know this by now having been to school, please try to read more
widely it would help you with promoting the MOQ
Again, the cure is confused with the disease and the MOQ's central terms are
horribly misunderstood. Take this post as a rope ladder. I've made it fairly
easy to climb out of the hole. Grab hold of it. See if it works.
DM: Evasion, false accusation, boring... I accept your view is not SOM is
not dualist, I just challenge that all SQ is conceptual, how simple is that,
please cut out the straw men, you can do better than this.
If you respond to this post, comment on the evidence. Ask about the
evidence. Respond to the actual ideas presented in it. C'mon, that's how any
normal conversation works. A simple declaration of one's likes and dislikes
is not the same as exchanging views, giving reasons, presenting relevant
evidence or otherwise discussing philosophical ideas. Obviously.
DM: Please practice what you preach for a change. If you only have evasion
techniques or want to accuse me of incoherence, being illogical, supporting
SOM again, please do not bother to reply, you are wasting your own time too.
If you want to genuinely engage and offer a real argument about the
advantages or disadvantages of the 2 different ideas about SQ I will be glad
to hear from you and would hope to learn something, when you are at your
best I do find you worth talking too, but not often enough. If you have good
reasons I am open to persuasion. I also think you are right to look to
elaborate and develop the MOQ beyond what is in Lila, and you have made
really good progress to date, but on this one issue of banning
pre-conceptual SQ, I think this is a bad step, and I can't even see why it
is even a good idea or is necessary, I think a better opportunity lies in
the direction of DQ with both pre-conceptual and conceptual SQ, this is what
the SQ levels should cover. Of course this can be tested in the wider world
and see which approach can make the most progress, of course maybe neither
will.
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