===== Original Message from PzEph <moq_discuss@moq.org> at 12/11/00 1:31 pm
>Elephant to all,
>
>I'd like to get a new thread going on mysticism. We spend a lot of time
>talking about the relation of MOQ to science, which is just fine, because
>Prisig spends a lot of time on this too, and what he says is very
>interesting. We don't spent so much talking about the relation of MOQ to
>mysticism, and this is understandable, because what Prisig has to say on the
>matter in Lila is confined to the two page passage that I've appended below.
>
>However, I think that what Prisig has to say on mysticism in this short
>passage is just about the most intelligent, perceptive, and important things
>that have ever been said on the subject, bar-girls and all. And this is in
>an area where the much regarded Wittgenstein and my own favourite Iris
>Murdoch have written books and books, to discuss what Prisig has captured on
>two pages. More precisely, Prisig's first page and a half outlines
>something like what Wittgenstein has to say on the matter, and the last half
>page outlines something like Murdoch's response. Wittgenstein thought that
>language, thought, should keep out of Qualities way; Murdoch that this
>puritanism about language and thought is on a hidding to nothing, and that
>we must learn to start from being the picture-making language users that we
>are. Already I am explaining this less clearly than Prisig.
>
>Below I have simply reproduced Prisig's text, and inserted my three short
>comments in square brackets [ ], and with some relevant comments from Plato,
>Hume, Wittgenstein and Murdoch appended. I'd like to hear and discuss any
>thoughts that you might have about this. Any.
>
>With apologies for the elephantine post,
>
>Pzeph
>_______________
>
>QUOTATION:
>
>
>Lila pp73/74
>
>"Of the two kinds of hostility to metaphysics he considered the mystics'
>hostility the more formidable. Mystics will tell you that once you've
>opened the door to metaphysics you can say good-bye to any genuine
>understanding of reality. Thought is not a path to reality. It sets
>obstacles in that path because once you try to use thought to approach
>something that is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you toward
>that something. It carries you away from it. To define something is to
>subordinate it to a tangle of intellectual relationships. And when you do
>that you destroy any real understanding.
> The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had
>called "Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess peice.
>Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition,
>ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independant of and
>prior to intellectual abstractions.
> Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense
>that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these
>things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there
>isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of
>dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition,
>this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in
>terms, a logical absurdity.
> It would be almost like a mathematical definition of randomness.
>The more you try to say what randomness is, the less random it becomes. Or
>"zero" or "space" for thtat matter. Today these terms are almost nothing to
>do with "nothing". "Zero" and "space" are complex relationships of
>"somethingness". If he said anything about the scientific nature of mystic
>understanding, science might benefit, but the actual mystic understanding
>would, if anthing, be injured. If he really wanted to do Quality a favour
>he should just leave it alone.
>
> [This is essentially the Wittgensteinian possition in the Tractatus, where
>value is a "That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent".
>Similarly, in my veiw (and Murdoch backs this up), Wittgenstein's
>Philosophical Investigations are an attempt to construct a picture of
>language minus the Quality "whereof we cannot speak" which is the constant
>spur to our active language use.]
>
> What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself
>had insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined. Yet here he was
>about to define it. Was this some kind of sell out? His mind went over
>this many times.
>
>[I have come to the connclusion that the important distinction is between a
>definition involving synthetic judgements, and a 'definition' involving only
>analysis. I the relevant sense, I think, the analytic 'definition' says
>exactly the nothing that we need it to say: it isn't a picturing of Quality,
>but a comment on it's unpictureablity.]
>
> A part of it said, "Don't do it. You'll get into nothing but
>trouble. You're going to start up a thousand dumb arguments about something
>that was perfectly clear until you came along. You're going to make ten
>thousand opponents and zero friends because the moment you open your mouth
>to say one thing about the nature of reality you automatically have a whole
>set of enemies who've already said that reality is something else."
> The trouble was, this was only one part of him talking. There
>was another part that kept saying "Ahh, do it anyway. It's interesting."
>This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and
>telling it not to define Quality was like telling a fat man to stay out of
>the refrigerator, or an alcoholic to stay out of bars. To the intellect the
>process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of its own. It
>produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover afterward,
>like too many cigarettes, or a party that lasted too long. Or Lila last
>night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What would you
>call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the
>strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity.
> But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless,
>doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's
>the degereacy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to be
>purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only person
>who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical
>meanings is a person who hasn't been born - and to whose birth no though has
>been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure.
>Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of
>life. That was all he had to say to the mystical objection to a Metaphysics
>of Quality. He next turned to those of logical positivism."
>
>[Quite. This other kind of degeneracy is what Murdoch calls the
>"ontological approach", which is the demand that everyday life conform to
>the standards of absolute being required by philosophy. Of course it
>cannot, and then the response of someone like Wittganstein is to say that in
>that case it doesn't exist at all: this is his attitude to private language
>and the inner, personality, the referent of 'red' etc. Plato, on the other
>hand, sees these objects as part of the world of becoming, not the world of
>pure being. He sees these objects as having some lessser, less pure, degree
>of reality, and so does not require them to ammount to a pure being, simply
>in order to allow that they have any degree of being at all. These things
>are not pure, but they exist, and we cannot do without them, for all that.
>This is the line Murdoch takes. It is evidently Prisig's line, and if it's
>of any interest, mine too.]
>
>
>FURTHER QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION:
>
>
>... not even this stays constant, that the flowing thing flows white, but it
>changes, so that there's flux of that very thing, whiteness, and change to
>another colour, ...since that's so, can it ever be possible to refer to any
>colour in such a way as to be speaking of it rightly? -How could it be
>Socrates? Indeed, how could it be possible to do so with any other thing of
>that kind, if it's always slipping away while one is speaking; as it must
>be, given that it's in flux? [Plato: Theaetetus 182d].
>
>
>Plato makes the assumption that value is everywhere, that the whole of life
>is movement on the moral scale, all knowledge is a moral quest, and the mind
>seeks reality and desires the good, which is a transcendent source of
>spiritual power, to which we are related through the idea of truth. ŒGood
>is what every soul pursues and for which it ventures everything, intuiting
>what is, yet baffled and unable to fully apprehend its nature.¹ (Republic
>505e.) [Iris Murdoch: Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Pub. PB Penguin
>1993 (hereafter MGM) p56]
>
>[For Wittgenstein in the Tractatus] ŒThe correct method in philosophy would
>really be the following: to say nothing at except what can be said, i.e.
>propositions of natural science - i.e. something that has nothing to do with
>philosophy - and then, whenever someone wanted to say something
>metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to
>certain signs in his propositions¹ (6.521, 6.522, 6,53; trans; Pears and
>McGuinness) [MGM p30]
>
>The Œpropositions of natural science¹ [in the above quote from the Tractatus
>(6.521, 6.522, 6,53)] means ordinary demonstrable factual statements...
>Facts are what can be expressed in a plain non-evaluative language. There
>is no place for any idea of Œmoral facts¹, or for the development of a
>Œmoral vocabulary¹.... The Tractatus may in general be regarded as an
>extreme and pure case, or by some as a reductio ad absurdum, of the idea
>that fact and value must not be allowed to contaminate each other. [MGM
>p30/31]
>
>
>The thought is not the words (if any) but the words occurring in a certain
>way with, as it were, a certain force and colour. [Iris Murdoch,
>Existentialists and Mystics, hereafter EM, p34]
>
>
>If we think of conceptualising rather as the activity of grasping, or
>reducing to order, our situations with the help of a language which is
>fundamentally metaphorical, this will operate against the world-language
>dualism which haunts us because we are afraid of the idealists. Seen from
>this point of view, thinking is not the using of symbols which designate
>absent objects, symbolising and sensing being strictly divided from each
>other. Thinking is not designating at all, but rather understanding,
>grasping, 'possessing'. [EM p41]
>
>ŒAn ³inner process² stands in need of outer criteria.¹ (Investigations 580.)
>Œ³But surely you wouldn¹t deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner
>process takes place...² The impression that we wanted to deny something
>arises from our setting our faces against the picture of the ³inner
>process²...¹ [PI 305][Quotations from Wittgenstein discussed at MGM 271,
>Murdoch¹s italics.]
>
>Sometimes, since thoughts are queer phenomena, we may find it hard to offer
>a clear and unambiguous description - but this will be true in the same way
>of other kinds of queer phenomena with which we have to deal. Sometimes too
>we may be puzzled about how exactly to relate the event-character of a
>thought to its meaning-character in the description. But there is nothing
>here which points to the presence of a special sort of item which is
>sharply separate from other items of experience. The mental event, as an
>experience, is not connected with 'meaning' in a way which is different
>from that in which any other experience may be connected with meaning. [EM
>p50-1]
>
>
> Œ³Are you not a behaviourist in disguise? Aren¹t you at bottom saying that
>everything except human behaviour is fiction?² If I do speak of a fiction,
>then it is of a grammatical fiction.¹ (PI 305-7.) By a grammatical fiction
>Wittgenstein presumably means something entertained by a philosopher. At
>295 he speaks of pictures we see ŒWhen looking into ourselves as we do in
>philosophy¹, and at 299 of Œbeing unable, when we surrender ourselves to
>philosophical thought, to help saying such-and-such¹. All right, we do not
>need an inner thought process which coincides with and produces outer
>speech. I think that Schopenhauer explained this more clearly than
>Wittgenstein. Such beliefs, if held by philosophers, are rightly pointed
>out by other philosophers as philosophical mistakes or Œfictions¹. Ordinary
>people [on the other hand], if left alone, get on perfectly well holding, or
>not holding, similar vague pictures of their inner mental existence... [MGM
>271]
>
>We must distinguish here between the case of otiose dualism, for instance,
>the Œinner process¹ which is supposed to articulate and present the finished
>outer speech; and the very general idea of Œprocesses¹ as stream of
>consciousness, inner reflection, imagery, in fact our experience as inner
>(unspoken, undemonstrated) being. It is this huge confused area which is
>being threatened, even removed [by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical
>Investigations]. [MGM 273].
>
>
>An ontological approach, which seeks for an identifiable inner stuff and
>either asserts or denies its existence, must be avoided. [EM. p38]
>
>
>
>What is the criterion for the sameness of two images? -What is the criterion
>for the redness of an image? For me, when it is someone else¹s image: what
>he says and does. For myself, when it is my image: nothing. And what goes
>for ³red² also goes for ³same². [Wittgenstein: PI p377]
>
> What am I to say about the word ³red²? -that it means something
>Œconfronting us all¹ and that everyone should really have another word,
>besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this:
>the word ³red² means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each
>person, it means something known only to him? (or perhaps rather: it refers
>to something known only to him.) [Wittgenstein: PI p273]
>
>
>What is observable is that we need and use the idea that thoughts are
>particular inner experiences. This is an idea which connects up with our
>notion of the privacy and the unity of our 'selves' or 'personalities'.
>There is here, if I may borrow a psychological term, an important and
>necessary 'illusion of immanence'; only to call it an 'illusion' risks
>giving the description an ontological flavour. It is rather a necessary
>regulative idea, about which it makes no sense to ask, is it true or false
>that it is so? It is for us as if our thoughts were inner events, and it is
>as if these events were describable either as verbal units or in
>metaphorical, analogical terms. [EM p38-9]
>
>
>There must be different concepts of experience. Here Wittgenstein has in
>mind the dictum about the inner needing outer criteria. May a doubt be
>thrown on this? What about the Œexperience¹ of being guided or influenced,
>for instance in copying a figure. While being guided I notice nothing
>special. Afterwards if I wonder what happened I feel there must have been
>something else. ŒI have the feeling that what is essential about it is ³an
>experience of being influenced², of a connection ... but I should not be
>willing to call any experienced phenomenon the ³experience of being
>influenced²... I should like to say that I experienced the ³because², and
>yet I do not want to call any phenomenon ³the experience of the because².¹
>([Philosophical Investigations] 176.) This anxiety connects with
>Wittgenstein¹s more general problem about inability to continue a series,
>Œhow to go on¹, how to trust to memory. We (I) reading Wittgenstein here
>feel the compelling presence of Œlogic¹, and also a sense of void.
>Wittgenstein cannot find (and really does not want) any Œbecause¹. The
>Œexperience¹ of being guided is an illusion. But what is to count as an
>experience? Back in ordinary language we may say, all right, often (for
>instance, counting, adding) we do not have any Œpalpable¹ experience - but
>also, often, we are in situations where the concept of experience is clearly
>in place. ŒIs it seeing or is it thought?¹ Well, usually it is both, one
>cannot, necessarily, Œlogically¹ prise experiences apart. Experience is
>consciousness. (Wittgenstein avoids the latter word.) It is deep and
>complex, it has density, thoughts and perceptions and feelings are combined
>in the swift movement of our mode of existence. (Swift, as pointed out by
>Schopenhauer.) Can we experience an influence? Yes, of course, when (for
>instance) we sit wondering whether we have been wrongly persuaded by another
>person. Physical feelings as well as mental images attend such anxiety. In
>Œsetting his face against the picture of the inner process¹ Wittgenstein
>seems to have banished not only (as in the example at 305-7) a naive error
>(or grammatical fiction) but the whole multifarious mixed-up business of our
>inner reflections, though-being, experience, consciousness. [MGM 278/279]
>
>
>It is impossible, upon any system, to defend either our understanding or our
>senses; and we but expose them further when we endeavour to justify them in
>that manner. [Hume: Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part 4, section 2,
>quoted in MGM p286]
>
>Language just does refer to the world, we just do posses the essential
>talent of knowing that something is the same again. Without this human
>nature would perish an go to ruin [allusion to Hume: A Treatise of Human
>Nature, Book 1, Part 4, Section 4]. Here we can see it as a Kantian-Humian
>deduction. It just has to be so for us to be as we are. [MGM p286]
>
>
>Wittgenstein is Œembarrassed¹ by the concept of experience. This huge
>concept directs us toward the messiness of ordinary life and it¹s mysteries.
>He persecutes sensation S. He denies Œexperiential volume¹ to meaning,
>intending, being influenced (p. 217). He also denies it (II xi p. 219) to
>the expression Œthe word is on the tip of my tongue¹. In more relaxed and
>less logical mood, in Culture and Value, p.79, he describes Œcases where
>someone has the sense of what he wants to say much more clearly in his mind
>than he can express in words. (This happens to me very often.) It is as
>though one had a dream image quite clearly before one¹s minds eye, but could
>not describe it to someone else so as to let him see it too. As a matter of
>fact, for the writer (myself) it is often as though the image stays there
>behind the words, so that they seem to describe it to me.¹ He goes on to
>say: ŒA mediocre writer must beware of too quickly replacing a crude,
>incorrect expression with a correct one. By doing so he kills his original
>idea, which was at least still a living seedling. Now it is withered and no
>longer worth anything. He may as well throw it on the rubbish heap.
>Whereas the wretched seedling was still worth something.¹ Here, with a free
>and apt use of metaphor, with swift intuitive imagination, Wittgenstein
>describes the experience of thinking. Yes, it is like that. We can come
>close to these things and do them justice. [MGM 282/283]
>
>
>
>
>
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===== Comments by john.lawton@sjhsyr.org (John Lawton) at 12/11/00 2:15 pm
I really enjoy this turn in the tide. I'm reminded of Martin Heidegger's
"turn". Where-in he became much more poetic in his language and thought.
Herein is a clue I think. The usual discursive grasping of thought finds
greater freedom and accuracy in the ambiguity (from a standard perspective)
and richness of poetry. I'm more inclined to find greater depth and
comprehension in the poet rather than the philosopher. Let's not forget,
Pirsig wrote a novel not a philosophical treatise. In the language of poetry
opposites are often unified, neat boudaries transgressed, ignored,
obliterated and transcendance and immanence enjoy a mutual collusion. The
riddle of language reaching for "Reality" or mapping it is untied in the
great poems IMO.
John
John C. Lawton
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