Ladies and Gentlemen,
Struan has said that he, and many other philosophers and scientists like
him, are Monists. As we all know, Monism asserts that everything in the
universe is essentially built of one substance, and that substance is
energy/matter.
The problem that Struan and others have raised with Pirsig's philosophy
is the validity of the idea that the established academic community holds a
subjective/objective dualist view of the universe.
As evidence to the fact that "virtually no one" holds this position,
Struan falls back repeatedly to the philospher David Hume. Without
question, David Hume is a philosophical genius, and equally without question
his view of the universe is very close to the view that Pirsig puts forth in
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
That, however, is not important at this moment. What is important is that
David Hume is a philosophical rebel. Not only were many scientists and
philosopher's of his day put off by the notion that the human mind was
simply a set of perceptions, and that no knowledge was secure since all
knowledge was based upon induction, but further, after David Hume, many
philosophers, most notably Immanuel Kant, worked diligently to show that
Hume was wrong. Kant, in fact, spent a large part of his life working out
the logic for A Priori knowledge. Why? Because Kant was a Christian, and the
concept of the soul as a seperate entity from the body was important to his
happiness.
Kant is praised as a hero, and in my text book of philosophy, his work
is counted more highly than is David Hume's.
But again, "virtually no one" holds a position of Subject/Object
Dualism. Now, I come from a conservative, American(US) tradition of
education, as does Pirsig. I think this is significant. I have no idea what
is taught, or assumed in English, Australian, or even Pakistani schools for
that matter, but what I do know, is that I was taught to write in the third
person. Rarely does one come across the first person, if ever, in a refereed
journal. "Objectivity" is the watch word of science. Introspection in
psychology was rejected as a legitimate method of inquiry because it was
non-objective. Even modern Cognitive Science is criticized for its lack of
scientific objectivity.
To use Psychology as an example once more, Behaviorism is and was the
movement that first brings legitimate scientific "objectivity" to
psychology. It does this on the foundation of Radical Empiricism and Logical
Positivism. Its assertions are bold:
That the mind is of no consequence to science as it is an unobservable
That only behavior is important as it is the only real observable phenomenon
That every behavior has a specific, observable, objective, scientific cause
That thoughts and feelings have no power over the environment.
Now, although "virtually no one" holds a subjective/objective
metaphysical view, psychologists have fought against the Behavioral,
Monistic, view of the universe because it does not explain such things as
awareness, self-consciousness, and qualia. I find the following quotation
from Daniel Dennet very interesting,
"Valéry’s “Variation sur Descartes” excellently evokes the
vanishing act that has haunted philosophy ever since Darwin overturned the
Cartesian tradition. If my body is composed of nothing but a team of a few
trillion robotic cells, mindlessly interacting to produce all the
large-scale patterns that tradition would attribute to the non-mechanical
workings of my mind, there seems to be nothing left over to be me. Lurking
in Darwin’s shadow there is a bugbear: the incredible Disappearing Self.[2]
One of Darwin’s earliest critics saw what was coming and could scarcely
contain his outrage:
In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the
artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the
whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS
NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on
careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of
the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's meaning; who, by
a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully
qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of
creative skill.[3]
This “strange inversion of reasoning” promises–or
threatens–to dissolve the Cartesian res cogitans as the wellspring of
creativity, and then where will we be? Nowhere, it seems. It seems that if
creativity gets “reduced” to “mere mechanism” we will be shown not to exist
at all. Or, we will exist, but we won’t be thinkers, we won’t manifest
genuine “Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill.” The individual
as Author of works and deeds will be demoted: a person, it seems, is a
barely salient nexus, a mere slub in the fabric of causation.
Whenever we zoom in on the act of creation, it seems we lose
sight of it. The genius we thought we could see from a distance gets
replaced at the last instant by stupid machinery, an echo of Darwin’s
shocking substitution of Absolute Ignorance for Absolute Wisdom in the
creation of the biosphere. Many people dislike Darwinism in their guts, and
of all the ill-lit, murky reasons for antipathy to Darwinism, this one has
always struck me as the deepest, but only in the sense of being the most
entrenched, the least accessible to rational criticism. There are thoughtful
people who scoff at Creationism, dismiss dualism out of hand, pledge
allegiance to academic humanism–and then get quite squirrelly when somebody
proposes a Darwinian theory of creative intelligence. The very idea that all
the works of human genius can be understood in the end to be mechanistically
generated products of a cascade of generate-and-test algorithms arouses deep
revulsion in many otherwise quite insightful, open-minded people."
Reference: http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/apapresadd.htm
Why is it that this position would be so abhorrent to so many people
that Dennett should comment upon it? Ask around and see who believes in
determinism and who believes in free-will. I know of no one who holds a
position of determinism. You see, if the universe generates our
intelligence, really, it is the universe that controls our intelligence as
well. We are simply an interaction of materialistic forces. We lose our
subjectivity because we lose our selves.
The "cascade of generate-and-test algorithms" that Dennett refers to is
really just one algoirithm. It is Quality. It is the same algorithm outlined
in Radical Empirical Behaviorism for learning, it is the same algorithm for
evolution, it is the same algorithm for the empirical method. It is Monist
in its perspective in that it denies the subject/object duality of the
soul/mind/feeling/thought/self against the brain/neuronal net/physical
reaction/discarge of neurons/set of perceptions. Quality says that those
things are all one thing. That minds and brains are the same thing. That
what you see is what you get. From the Zen, Only This.
The astounding implications of this monistic philosophy are identical to
the astounding implications derived from Radical Empiricism and Logical
Positivism. Only, scientists are too afraid to leave a positision of
objectivity, to take a position of subjectivity. What do I mean by this?
I mean that if minds are really only matter, that all matter must be
mind. I realize that I have to overcome a necessary and sufficient problem.
But before I tackle that, let's think about this for just a second. Is it
impossible that planets and solar systems could interact to create some kind
of vast universal awareness? Certainly it seems absurd. However, neurons are
nothing more than single-celled orgamisms living in a symbiotic
relationship. How is it that millions of single-celled organisms could ever
form the complex entity that is you?
But, you say, "I am aware" and the planets are not. I have said this
before, and I want to say it again. To define awareness objectively is to de
fine it behaviorally. It is to define it by what can be observed. How do we
define awareness empirically? Well, I know my wife is aware when she
responds to my inquiries. I know she is aware when I pinch her and she says.
"Yeow." So, she is aware if she responds to her external stimuli. If she
does not respond to external stimuli, she as a system, is not aware of it.
The door responds to external stimuli. It responds to far fewer external
stimuli than my wife, but, nevertheless when I tug on the doorknob, the door
opens. It seems absurd to say that the door is aware. But how do we know
that it is not? It is impossible to empirically verify the subjective aspect
of another mind. The reason why this is so, is because even if could
wire-tap directly into another person's brain and read their thoughts and
feelings, these thoughts and feelings would still be your own thoughts and
feelings. Why? Because they would be translated into your neuronal firings,
into your brain chemistry, and would only then be your perceptions of
another's thoughts and feelings.
If you think about this for very long, you run into a philosophical
conundrum that some of the fancy-talkers like to call Solipsism. This, as
I'm sure you all know, is the idea that all of reality exists only in our
heads. It seems to be impossible to disprove this particular position, yet,
"virtually no one" believes it. It is, however, a monist position. It is
opposite of Struan's monist position, however, in that while his is
completely objective, Solipsism is completely subjective.
Just as Pirsig says in Lila, nothing is lost if we substitute prefers
for tends in Newton's laws. "An object in motion prefers to stay in motion
works just as well as saying "An object in motion tends to stay in motion."
However, if you were to mention this to a scientist, he will quickly let you
know that neither of these are Newton's law. Newton's law is a set of
equations that describes observed behavior of the planetary bodies. This is
empirically objective, and it leaves out the unnecessary positing of
awareness or any other entity to explain the motion. It also leaves out one
of Pirsig's ghosts...Gravity.
Gravity is really just a man-made concept to describe empirical
observation. There is no "proof" of gravity. It could be Demons pulling us
down to the earth. It could be the Jabberwock or the PengLion, or the
Dropping Tendency. Gravity is only a word that describes a family of events.
It is a concept that allows us to divide the universe into operable parts.
Yet, it is absurd to believe that the stars could be aware, or that
the door is aware. But at the same time, awareness is only a concept that
describes an empirical state. Even if one should point to a set of neurons
as a correlate of awareness, those neurons must respond. There is no way we
can get inside a neuron to see how it feels. It responds and feels
simultaneously. It is both subjective and objective at the same time.
But, virtually no one buys this monist view of the universe.
I do. All of the universe is responding. In multiple systems of heavenly
bodies, and earthly bodies, the universe is responding. When the universe
ceases to respond, time stands still. There is nothing. When the universe or
any part of it responds, it change, and time moves forward. When time moves
forward, the Universe orders itself in a new way to fit the present
circumstances. It moves to a state of higher Quality.
-dave
David Prince
Systems Analyst
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