Arlo said to John: ...You're making a very specific claim, in order to reduce Pirsig's problematic classical/romantic schism to one that is determined by neurophysiology. I'm saying, the current research does not support that at all. What's critical here is that you're not making the claim to support a neurological position, you're coopting a popularly held neurological belief in order to support a metaphysical distinction. If you were interested in neurology, I suppose, you'd find better discussion on a neurology board, or you'd be going through the current research yourself to see what's going on in the field. But what you seem to be interested in is finding neurological theories, no matter how they are being reshaped by current studies, that support your belief that Pirsig's classical and romantic modes of thinking are neurological determined.
dmb says: Right. It seems to be a half-baked version of the brain-mind identity theory, which, ironically, is pretty thoughtless. http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/why-study-philosophy-auid-289 "The only way to scrutinise concepts is to examine the use of the words that express them. Conceptual investigations are investigations into what makes sense and what does not. And, of course, questions of sense precede questions of empirical truth – for if something makes no sense, it can be neither true nor false. It is just nonsense – not silly, but rather: it transgresses the bounds of sense. Philosophy patrols the borders between sense and nonsense; science determines what is empirically true and what is empirically false. What falsehood is for science, nonsense is for philosophy. Let me give you a simple example or two. When psychologists and cognitive scientists say that it is your brain that thinks rather than nodding your head and saying, “How interesting! What an important discovery!”, you should pause to wonder what this means. What, you might then ask, is a thoughtful brain, and what is a thoughtless one? Can my brain concentrate on what I am doing, or does it just concentrate on what it is doing? Does my brain hold political opinions? Is it, as Gilbert and Sullivan might ask, a little Conservative or a little Liberal? Can it be opinionated? Narrow-minded? What on earth would an opinionated and narrow-minded brain be? Just ask yourself: if it is your brain that thinks, how does your brain tell you what it thinks? And can you disagree with it? And if you do, how do you tell it that it is mistaken, that what it thinks is false? And can your brain understand what you say to it? Can it speak English? If you continue this line of questioning you will come to realise that the very idea that the brain thinks makes no sense. But, of course, to show why it makes no sense requires a great deal more work." 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
