I hesitate to put my two cents in. I really feel like I have nothing of value
to say. But I feel a compulsion to add just a bit. I've been reading so much
lately on Presence (The Power of Now, The Art of Presence, The Happiness Trap)
etc..., that while this is not "traditional" (aka, Western) philosophy, and
I've taken no *formal* courses on philosophy (just a few books here and there
over a 24 year span since I reached "adulthood" at age 18), and then here and
there some coursework in Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, Cognitive
Science, Buddhism, and a Masters in Cognitive Psychology. So I am no philosophy
expert and my apologies that I am not contributing a wealth and breadth of
knowledge to the group. However I still think it's relevant. I find everyone's
comments interesting and I understand about 50% (approximately) of the comments
made, and I still have not yet read "Lila" (my bad!). I'm still reading ZAMM
for the third time in two years, and trying to grasp it fully, which I may
never fully do.
So my definition of presence here is just this, and something to just mull over
in your quiet moments standing in line or waiting in traffic for the light to
turn green ... "Presence is the cessation of thought without loss of
consciousness." (Eckhart Tolle, "The Art of Presence"). So I feel that giving
any opinion on consciousness or intellectual levels would just be my
(completely uninformed at that) opinion. Even after I read all the books
recommended on this forum, really put an effort into it, and sunk my
intellectual "teeth" into it, that it would still be only that, MY opinion.
So in an effort to avoid sounding too hypocritical, that's all I have to say on
this matter. In the end, it's all really interesting, but, we'll never really
know "truth". It's fun to have a stab at it though, and to see what thousands
of years of great minds and thinkers have come up with! :-)
Namaste. In peace.
Emily Schober
> To: [email protected]
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 10:16:47 -0600
> Subject: Re: [MD] Two Minds
>
> A possible further-back relation could be the Aristotelian, believe it
> or not, tradition through Aquinas, in which the person's wholeness is
> primary, and "body" and "mind" are analytic products.
>
> In Zen:
> https://books.google.com/books?id=5Gg8CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT78&lpg=PT78&dq=%22how+could+they+have+flown+away?%22&source=bl&ots=R_UqQiqYcG&sig=8deB1aZIQt7pZNn2eavIT32-STQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI1Jf-ltf5yAIViY8-Ch2T4wfp#v=onepage&q=%22how%20could%20they%20have%20flown%20away%3F%22&f=false
>
>
> MRB
>
> On 11/5/2015 8:20 AM, david wrote:
> > Personally, I spent a lot less time at moq_discuss just because there are
> > other options out there on the internet for people interested in
> > philosophy. Pirsig is still my main pivot point but I find it more
> > satisfying to discuss his ideas in a wider context with people of various
> > backgrounds and interests. Not to be a snob about it - but it's much more
> > fun when the discussion group is populated by folks with some kind of
> > philosophical education. Otherwise, even very intelligent people will have
> > no idea what you're talking about. Lately, I've been talking about theories
> > of mind, the hard problem of consciousness and things like that.
> >
> >
> > There is a school of thought that fits with Pirsig's philosophy called
> > "embodied mind" or "embodied cognition" and it addresses some of the
> > questions being posed here in the last few days. Neutral monism, for
> > example, is a good way to think about the MOQ. The embodied mind theories
> > are such that the mind-body problem just sort of evaporates or rather is
> > exposed as a fake problem. The authors of "Philosophy in the Flesh: The
> > Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought" are particularly
> > helpful because they (especially Mark Johnson) make use of John Dewey and
> > William James as their philosophical framework. Pirsig explicitly
> > identifies the MOQ with James's work and with mainstream American
> > Pragmatism - and I've been convinced that there are no important
> > differences between Dewey, James, and Pirsig. It's really quite thrilling.
> > Here is a short paper by Mark Johnson and it's full of ideas that could be
> > lifted right from Pirsig's books.
> >
> >
> > http://www.american-philosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/Feeling_William_James_But.htm
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: Moq_Discuss <[email protected]> on behalf of
> > Adrie Kintziger <[email protected]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2015 11:02 AM
> > To: [email protected]
> > Cc: [email protected]
> > Subject: Re: [MD] Two Minds
> >
> > in the moq, idea's come first;... wich provides a good workaround for the
> > mind body problem
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem
> >
> >
> >
> > 2015-11-04 18:46 GMT+01:00 Austin Fatheree <[email protected]>:
> >
> >> If things have been too quiet, let me throw some things out there for
> >> discussion. I know I'm late to the party so if any of this has been
> >> discussed before, feel free to point me in the right direction.
> >>
> >> A thing occurred to me while reading Lila that is really a technical point,
> >> albeit I think an important one, that doesn't really change any conclusions
> >> that Pirsig makes, but that may be worth discussion.
> >>
> >> Pirsig indicates that the Intellectual level emerges from the social
> >> level(and by definition emerged in time after the social level) and thus
> >> has moral authority over it.
> >>
> >> I think this is technically wrong, although the technical reasons don't end
> >> up changing many of the conclusions.
> >>
> >> I think that both the social and intellectual levels emerged out of the
> >> biological level. The intellectual did emerge after the social and still
> >> holds moral authority over it and still has access to it, but it is more
> >> correct to say that it emerged from biology.
> >>
> >> I think this because it more adequately fits what we see in reality. Our
> >> brains have many parts and recent Psychological analysis shows that it also
> >> has multiple modes. Kahneman puts this forward in Thinking Fast and Slow (
> >> http://amzn.to/1MzA82R ). Here we see System 1 (Quick Judgments) and
> >> System 2 (Methodical Thought) being driven by various parts of the brain
> >> and assimilated in the neocortex. The theory is that the more reptilian
> >> brain evolved first, and the neocortex evolved with access to these other
> >> parts of the brain to add prediction and better fitness. System 1 is the
> >> social level brain and System 2 is the intellectual part. System 1 just is
> >> and just does. System 2 can override and use simulated expectations as a
> >> basis.
> >>
> >> Ultimately though, both evolutions were biological responses to fitness.
> >> Both emerged out of biology and out of what the biological level values
> >> (fitness).
> >>
> >> I think this is important because at one point Pirsig says that a level
> >> only has access to the level below it. I think the Intellectual level does
> >> have access to the biological(although it has many built in biases because
> >> System 1 was around with it developed). System 2 may even be completely
> >> reliant on System 1 existing, but it can still reach down through it and
> >> act at the biological level.
> >>
> >> Unfortunately the fallout from this is that distinguishing that the
> >> intellectual level should have moral authority over the social level
> >> becomes even murkier. Unfortunately this also seems be an accurate map of
> >> the territory. I’m from Houston and yesterday we voted down our Houston
> >> Equal Rights Ordinance(HERO) because we have a significant portion of our
> >> population that has no desire to operate at an intellectual level. It is
> >> all still way to social here in the South and social means that that guy
> >> over there is going to get one over on me if I don’t take it for myself.
> >> Boo us.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Austin
> >> twitter: @afat http://twitter.com/afat
> >> ᐧ
> >> Moq_Discuss mailing list
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> >> http://moq.org/md/archives.html
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > parser
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