To: Bo, Matt, Peter and Struan From: Roger **** THE QUOTES IN QUESTION******* WILLIAM JAMES: ".....a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, plays the part of the knower, of a state of mind, of consciousness; while in a different context, the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of the thing known, of an objective content ..... in one group it can figure as a thought, in another as a thing" ROBERT PIRSIG: "...subjects and objects are not the starting point of experience. Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which [James] described as 'the immediate flux of life' .... Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically precedes this distinction." ROGER: Pirsig says the same thing throughout ZMM and Lila. He explains in Ch 9 that Whitehead's "dim apprehension" is DQ and that objects are not primary but rather "... a complex pattern of static values derived from primary experience.... In this way, static patterns become the universe of distinguishable things." ******* THE DISCUSSION BEGINS....************** STRUAN: Now all of [the above] IF TAKEN AS A METAPHYSICAL POSITION reduces to Idealism. ROGER: No way, Jose. This is not idealism. Reality is by no means a product of our imaginations. ONLY THE BOUNDARIES ARE. Reality (DQ) is dynamic and flowing, it is what Alfred Whitehead called "The seamless coat of the universe." It is only our concepts of reality (sq) which are divided, static and discontinuous. In this way, our philosophizing of reality (which involves conceptualizing it ) distorts DQ into fragmented, illusory simplifications of reality. By the way, there are definite parallels between James/Whitehead/Pirsig's conclusions in metaphysics and psychology, Godel's famous "incompleteness theorem" in logic, and Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" in science. All three stumble into fundamental limitations in objectivity and duality. As eminent physicist Erwin Schroedinger noted: "Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them .... does not exist." He compares subject/object to placing an object in front of a mirror -- you seem to get two objects where there is only one. Similarly, when our intellect REFLECTS upon the world, we get two images, a seer and a seen, a subject and an object. Schroedinger maintains that "The external world and conciousness are one and the same thing." Pirsig says much the same thing with pre-conceptual DQ, which he refers to as "the base of reality." STRUAN: Yes I do know about James. He was a psychologist primarily and his philosophy was entirely concerned with human experience and consciousness. THIS PRE-SUPPOSES A HUMAN MIND!!! Thus when he talks about undivided experience he is talking about something that happens IN THE MIND before THE MIND differentiates the experience. His contributions to the philosophy of Pragmatism ran along similar lines. In a nutshell, he believed that any philosophy was true if the consequences of holding it were satisfactory to the individual - truth being relative to the individual. This IF IT WERE TAKEN AS A METAPHYSICAL POSITION is pure idealism. ROGER: No, Struan, your "mind" is just another derivation of experience, of reality (albeit a good one). According to the MOQ, reality (DQ) is undivided. James points out that you cannot hear the hearer because the hearer is nothing but the entire stream of sounds heard. Similarly, Ken Wilber clarifies that "The seer, seeing and the seen are all aspects of one process -- never at any time is one found without the others." Once you divide reality, which you do by pre-supposing a distinct mind or seer, you also pre-suppose the seeing and the seen. You are correct in that once you start slicing up reality, it is reasonable to assign one of these slices to be an objective mind. Much of Western Philosophy's history has been sidetracked by failing to question this very assumption.The solution is of course to realize that the boundaries and divisions are themselves the illusion. William James eventually saw this and hence his creation of Radical Empiricism. Schroedinger compares dualistic assumptions to the confusion among early mountain climbers about Guarisankar and Mt Everest. Originally considered two peaks, it finally came to light that they were the same peak from different views. Western Philosophy's mind/matter duality is similarly confused. Which view is correct, the North face or the South? Mind or matter? Some philosophers have held that only the North face is correct. Others that the South face is the true one. Some have tried to reduce the North into the South, and others vice versa. North-South and mind-matter, are different aspects of one reality. The boundary though is illusory. Reality, like Mount Everest, is undivided. There can be no North without South, no mind without matter. Separating mind, experience and matter can of course be an extremely useful process if we remember not to mistake our maps for the territory (something Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness). But Western Intellectuals have often forgotten their assumptions and gotten lost in battles over boundaries and divisions that exist not in reality, but just in tattered,out-dated 2000 year-old maps. STRUAN: ...'pure experience' still presupposes a mind to have that experience and this does not in any way detract from the fact that experience has not yet been divided into subjects and objects. Again Pirsig tells us, ""...subjects and objects are not the starting point of experience." And we can all go along with that; but what is having this experience? Experience logically presupposes an experiencer does it not? ROGER: The 'experiencer' IS the 'subject' ....right? You can't have a mind or an 'experiencer' without already making the initial division, and as Rod Stewart sang "The first cut is the deepest." If you have already sliced the world into an independent experiencer, I would say the other two divisions (experience and that-which-is-experienced) are pretty much logically inevitable. But make no mistake, Pirsig and the others I quoted today reject this first cut as illusory as well. STRUAN: And what does the distinguishing? Our old friend the human mind? ROGER: In undivided reality, everything you are looking at is you who are looking at it. That art thou. Or to answer to your question, I will borrow a quote from RH Blythe "The experience BY the universe OF the universe." STRUAN: Even emergentism doesn't help. If electrons can in some primitive way, 'experience,' then they must be the ones which are presupposed in order to divide this pure experience. Whichever way you cut it, it will not work. ROGER: Exactly!!!! When you cut, you destroy something. Once you pull out the analytical blade and begin dividing reality, you make sq of DQ. But the two are not synonymous. One is a pale, dead version of the other. One is the map, the other is the territory. But to end on a more positive intellectual note, as Pirsig wrote in Ch 7 of ZMM: "When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.... But what is less noticed .... something is always created too. Instead of just dwelling on what is killed, it's important also to see what's created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity....." Twenty years later this seed of a thought transformed and grew into DQ, sq and his evolutionary Metaphysics of Quality. Struan, I know that you reject Pirsig's accomplishment and that you deny that many conventional western intellectual patterns are unwittingly mired in dualistic thought -- but I hope this clarifies why I accept the former and am so critical of the latter. Plus, I enjoy the dialogue. Roger PS -- Sorry for suggesting you 'distorted' Mr Pirsig's position. I suspect Bo is right about SODV being oversimplified for the audience. PPS -- Bo, note how this post reinforces your SOLAQI concept? MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
