Ha John and others,
I am happy that you state that Northrop is the originator of the fundamental
tenet of the MOQ.
Maybe the best I can do John, to neutralize your objections against the
words Northrop uses in the fragment that I quoted, is to give you below the
full preceding text of the quote in the chapter concerned (Ch XXIV: LOGIC
AND CIVILIZATION).
As you know, Northrop is a pupil and follower of Whitehead (wrote a chapter
in The Philosphy of ANW). He writes sometimes complicated sentences,
probably because he wants to express himself very precise. Would not accuse
him of unclarity.
A lot of quotes from other chapters would be appropriate in reply to your
mail. However, the best thing to do of course, would be to buy and read
the whole LSH book (402 pages, still available according to SQUONK).
Willem
CHAPTER XXIV
LOGIC AND CIVILIZATION
Formal reasoning and deductively formulated science, philosophy and religion
are not necessary if only concepts by intuition are used in a given culture.
If what science and philosophy attempt to designate is immediately
apprehended, then obviously all that one has to do in order to know it is to
observe and contemplate it. The methods of intuition and contemplation
become the sole trustworthy modes of inquiry. It is precisely this which the
East affirms and precisely why its science has never progressed for long
beyond the initial natural history stage of development to which concepts by
intuition restrict one.
The philosophy of intuition of Bergson and the pure empiricism of William
James mark a return in the West to the methods of the East, mixed however
with the more formal and technically scientific procedures of the West. The
same mixture occurs in the existentialism combined with theism of
Kierkegaard. Existentialism, it is to be noted, is the thesis that
immediately felt and apprehended reality, which is always a particular
rather than a universal, is the real. Hence, only in Heidegger and Sartre
does one find a pure existentialism in which reality is restricted to the
concrete particularity given by intuition. And with them, as was not the
case with William James, only its transitory differentiations have been
emphasized. Hence, the English title of Sartre's play, No Exit. The more
timeless all-embracing field character of the existentially immediate, which
the Eastern methods of intuition and contemplation exhibit, has been
overlooked by Heidegger and Sartre and also by Kierkegaard.
The traditional Oriental, like William James, has noted the timeless
aesthetic continuum in the existential as well as its transitory
differentiations. Hence for the existentialist of the traditional Orient,
there is an exit. This exit, however, is not as with Kierkegaard, to the
determinate God the Father of the Christian, or any other, theistic
religion, since the theistic deity belongs to the theoretic component of
reality which the Orient rejects. The exit, instead, is from the mortal,
transitory differentiations of the aesthetic continuum to the indeterminate
timeless aesthetic continuum of which they are the transitory
differentiations. In other words, the exit is from the differentiated
transitory factors to the timeless all-embracing indeterminate factor within
the purely existential aesthetic component.
Consequently the methods underlying the knowledge and attendant civilization
of the traditional Far East are more complicated than their designation as
intuition and contemplation at first suggests. This complication arises
because the difficult factor to experience existentially is not everything
which intuition or immediate apprehension gives but the indeterminateness
and continuity of the aesthetic continuum with the differentiations which it
contains omitted or neglected.
Although this indeterminate factor is exactly as immediately and empirically
apprehended as the determinate items given through the distinctive senses
and by introspection, the intuition of it, in and for itself, is not given
by a specific sense and is by no means easy. Consequently, it was natural
that methods should be devised to facilitate this difficult achievement.
The Yoga is precisely such a practical method. The dialectic of negation of
Buddhism by which one rationalistically rejects all determinate factors
whether postulated or intuited until only the bare indeterminate manifold
remains is another. The practice of the early Indian sages of sitting on
their haunches in the heart of an Indian forest, so overwhelmed with the
diversity and complexity of its tropical foliage that the mind loses all
capacity to distinguish differentiations and is left to contemplate the
unfathomable and ineffable intensity and the inexpressible immediacy of
indeterminate experience itself, is a third.
If, on the other hand, that which knowledge is attempting to determine is
designated by concepts by postulation which propose common sense,
scientific, philosophical and theological objects and structures quite other
than the ineffable aesthetic material which mere immediate apprehension
reveals, it is evident that the Eastern methods of observation, intuition
and contemplation, while necessary, are quite insufficient.
The question immediately arises, therefore, in the West, how trustworthy
postulated factors can be distinguished from spurious ones. Without logic
and deductive reasoning this is impossible. Only by applying formal logic or
mathematical computation to what is postulated to deduce from it
consequences which can be put to an empirical test in a crucial experiment,
as a direct inspection, can the proposal of a crank be distinguished from
that of a Newton or an Einstein. This is the reason why the West in its
science and philosophy, having introduced concepts by postulation, is
necessarily forced to maintain that mathematics and formal logical
reasoning, and not merely intuition and empirical apprehension and
contemplation, are absolutely necessary to gain trustworthy knowledge.
The precise method involves four parts: (1) The postulational formulation of
various hypotheses concerning unobserved entities and structures, (2) the
application of formal logic to the postulates stated in terms of concepts by
postulation to deduce theorems stated in terms of the same kind of concepts,
(3) the designation of epistemic correlations which relate the concepts by
postulation in the deduced theorems to corresponding concepts by intuition
which are usually concepts by sensation, thereby bridging the gulf between
the postulated and the empirically intuited in order to make empirical
verification or falsification possible, and (4) the immediate inspection of
fact to note whether it is what the concepts by intuition designated in (3)
prescribe. When the latter is the case, the postulated entities, for
example, electrons, atoms or electromagnetic propagations, are said to
exist; when it is not the case, the postulated factors are said not to
exist. In this manner false theories in terms of concepts by postulation are
distinguished from trustworthy ones.
The important point to note, for our present purposes, is that this
distinction between false and trustworthy knowledge is not possible without
the deductive formulation of theory involved in steps (1) and (2) and the
attendant inescapable use of precise definitions and formal logic. This is
the reason why the West has tended to insist on mathematics and logic in its
criterion of genuine knowledge, and why even its ethical, philosophical and
theological treatises have had the systematic technical, logical form of
Spinoza's Ethics, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,
St. Thomas's Summa and Whitehead's Process and Reality rather than the
intuitive, informal, poetic temper of the Upanishads or the Analects of
Confucius.
Stages (3) and (4) in the foregoing analysis of Western scientific and
philosophic method make it equally evident however, that the West,
notwithstanding its insistence upon concepts by postulation as designative
of real knowledge, also uses concepts by intuition. Without the latter the
bridge cannot be made by the epistemic correlations from the postulated to
the positivistically and aesthetically intuited, which is essential if
verification or falsification is to be attained. The charge often made by
Easterners that the West entirely neglects intuition cannot, therefore, be
maintained.
It may be doubted whether anyone in the East has ever intuited and
contemplated all the fine distinctions in the different species of observed
plants and animals to the degree to which this is true of a Western
naturalist such as Linnaeus. The West has its natural history science as
well as its more mature deductively formulated science and philosophy, and
even in the case of the verification of the latter, as well as almost
exclusively in even the statement of the former, concepts by intuition and
the Eastern methods appropriate thereto are used.
Consequently, there is a very definite sense in which the dominant
philosophy of the West is more inclusive than that of the major systems of
the Orient. Whereas the latter tend to rule out logical methods and concepts
by postulation as positively designative of anything ultimately real or
important in knowledge, the West in its insistence upon concepts by
postulation and their attendant formal logical method as essential for real
knowledge of what exists nevertheless also uses concepts by intuition.
For this reason the East, if it is to gain an understanding of the aspect of
reality grasped by the West, must accept as positive factors the concepts by
postulation and the formal methods to which the sages of the Orient have at
most given only a negative value. The West, however, in order to include
within its outlook the basic insight of the East, needs merely to begin with
its present concepts by intuition which tend to be restricted to those which
are concepts by inspection and to note their apprehension not as atomic
simples, but as transitory differentiations of the equally intuited
manifold. When this manifold is considered in abstraction by itself, apart
from the differentiations, as indeterminate, the West will have the basic
concept by intuition of the East.
Even so the West has much further to go before it has comprehended the full
import of this which the East has to teach it. For the tendency of the West
when confronted with the immediately apprehended is either to confuse it and
corrupt it with the postulated or to use it merely as a sign of the presence
of the postulated and forthwith to neglect it, as Plato and the West's other
metaphysical philosophers have tended to do. Thus the West, even in its
occasional brief intervals of positivism or in the case of those of its
philosophers, like Bergson, who have emphasized intuition, has never learned
fully to appreciate the immediately apprehended in and for itself. As a
consequence, the Westerner has tended to become emotionally and spiritually
starved. He has been saved in theory but unsatisfied in spirit. What must be
grasped is the fundamental insight of the Orient that the immediately
apprehended is quite other than the scientifically, philosophically and
theologically postulated and yet is nevertheless an ultimate and essential
component of reality worthy of attention and contemplation in and for
itself.
Contemporary Western art, which is breaking the immediately apprehended
aesthetic materials free from their epistemic correlation with the old
postulated commonsense and theological symbolic references, is a development
in this new direction, as Chapters III and IX have indicated. There are
other evidences that this movement by the East and the West toward an
all-inclusive world philosophy is already under way.
One has but to talk to any contemporary leader in China or Japan or to
observe what these countries are now doing to realize that the major factor
which they propose to learn from the West is its technology. Their
contemporary military adventures are making this all the more necessary.
With respect to religion, art and humanistic as opposed to scientific
philosophy many important Orientals regard the West as having little to
teach them.
To use Western technology effectively, the Oriental must master the Western
scientific theories from which it stems. These scientific theories have
already made the Oriental aware of the positive significance of concepts by
postulation and of the necessity of the formal, logical and mathematical
methods of the West upon which their trustworthy usage depends. In this
manner the East is being forced to enlarge its concept of the nature of
things to include the theoretic component of reality cultivated by the West.
Consequently, the philosophy of tomorrow, even in the more passive,
contemplative portion of the Orient, as well as in the busy, active
technical West, is going to be a philosophy of natural science. It is not
from mere fancy, but because of a profound understanding of the basic task
of his own culture that Junjirġ Takakusu, at the age of seventy-two, after
spending his entire life upon the study of the Sanskrit and other historical
sources of the Buddhist religion, turned the major portion of his thought
and time to the study of the philosophy of natural science.
The Easterner's own intuitive philosophy will also be retained. Such a
believer in Western science as Hu Shih has made this clear. In the
Introduction to his The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China,
he writes as follows: "It would surely be a great loss to mankind if the
acceptance of this new civilization (of the West) should take the form of
abrupt displacement instead of organic assimilation." To this end he
proposes a return to the ancient Chinese classics where the beginnings of
Western scientific methods were suggested but never pursued. One result of
such a return may well be the rediscovery of the intuitive concept of the
indeterminate continuum which is at the basis of Confucianism, as we have
previously indicated, and the retention of this along with the concepts by
postulation from Western science. Between these two factors there is no
conflict whatever. In this manner, the basic doctrine of the East and the
unique use of concepts by postulation from the West can be combined.
There is a converse movement in the West already taking it to the same
position. This movement has its origin in the intense analysis of the method
of deductive, empirical science which is now going on. This analysis centers
around the question concerning how theories about unobserved scientific
objects designated by concepts by postulation can be verified. The epistemic
correlations, referred to previously, answer this question. They also make
it evident, however, that any complete and adequate philosophy of science
must have an irreducible concept by intuition as well as irreducible
concepts by postulation. Otherwise theories formulated in terms of the
latter concepts could never be verified, and there would be only the
theoretically conceived and no directly apprehended world with all its
moving aesthetic immediacy to apprehend and contemplate. In this manner the
analysis of the method of verifying scientific objects designated by
concepts by postulation is driving the West to the acceptance of a concept
by intuition as essential also.
One other development in the West is enforcing the same conclusion. Its
modern philosophy began with Descartes' conviction of the indubitable
certainty of the existence of his own self as a mental substance. It is
significant that Descartes justified this conclusion not on the empirical
grounds of intuition and contemplation but on the rationalistic ground that
it was logically presupposed in the introspected fact of his own doubting.
Only the doubting, not the doubter, was given by immediate apprehension.
Thus Descartes' mental substance was a concept by postulation. His concepts
of God and matter were of the same kind.
This is true also of Locke's mental and material substances. They arose as a
result of the necessary attempt to clarify the relation between the
postulated atoms in Newton's physics and the directly inspected colors and
sounds and odors given to the senses. As Newton emphasized, only the latter
were concepts by intuition.
It was an essential point in the theories of Descartes and Locke that
colors, sounds and all other immediately apprehended aesthetic impressions
had their basis solely in the action of the material substances on the
mental substances. In short, modern Western philosophy has been reared upon
the attempt to define the intuited away in terms of an interaction of the
postulated.
The history of modern philosophy is the story of the failure of this
attempt. Berkeley and Hume showed that upon such a basis the knower could
never get the meanings requisite to formulate even the notion of a
substance, whether it be mental or material. Modern psychology and
psychobiology have confirmed Berkeley's and Hume's analysis. All attempts to
clarify the manner in which the atoms of physics and their emissions of
energy act upon the mental substance to cause the latter to project the
supposedly phenomenal continuum of colors and sounds have been unproductive.
The theory has now turned out to be a deductively futile scientific
hypothesis. The results in epistemology have been similar. All attempts of
modern philosophers subsequent to Descartes and Locke to resolve the
epistemological difficulties, into which this modern Western attempt to
reduce the intuited to the postulated lands one, have ended in failure.
The reason is very simple. It has been obscured, because of the neglect of
the distinction between concepts by intuition and concepts by postulation.
Colors and sounds being immediately apprehended things are factors denoted
by concepts by intuition. Persistent mental and material substances being
unobserved postulated factors are entities designated by concepts by
postulation. Since these two types of concepts get their meanings in
different ways they refer to different worlds of discourse. The logical
methods of definition and deduction can move within a given world of
discourse, but they cannot move from one world of discourse to an entirely
different one. This is the reason why no amount of logical manipulation by
means of definition or deduction can take one from the wavelength for "blue"
which is a concept by postulation to the immediately sensed "blue" which is
a concept by intuition. Yet it is precisely this which the modern attempt to
derive the aesthetically immediate factors which we directly apprehend from
the interaction of postulated mental and material factors has tried to do.
Modern philosophy has ended in failure because its basic thesis, that the
aesthetically immediate is a secondary, purely phenomenal factor derived
from the postulated, attempts what is logically impossible, namely, the
logical derivation or deduction of concepts by intuition from concepts by
postulation.
Consequently, modern Western epistemologists are being gradually forced to
the same position to which modern logicians have been led as a consequence
of their analysis of the relation between empirical intuited and postulated
theoretical factors in scientific method, the conclusion, namely, that there
must be an irreducible concept by intuition as well as irreducible concepts
by postulation. But to admit this is to accept the fundamental thesis of the
Orient that the aesthetically immediate known solely by intuition and
contemplation represents something scientifically and philosophically
irreducible and ultimate.
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: John Beasley <beasley@austarnet.com.au>
Aan: moq_discuss@moq.org <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Datum: dinsdag 24 juli 2001 14:03
Onderwerp: Re: MD Consciousness Explained
>Hullo Willem,
>
>It certainly seems Northrop is the originator of the fundamental tenet of
>the MOQ. A very interesting quote. The key section is:
>
>"instead of regarding consciousness as a faculty or property of a knower by
>means of which he takes hold of and is aware of purely subjective projected
>aesthetic materials such as colors and sounds, a knower will be thought of
>as conscious because he is composed of irreducible, ineffable, aesthetic
>materials. It is the primacy of the aesthetic and the ineffability of
>anything known with immediacy which is the source of the so-called
>consciousness of the individual and not the consciousness of the individual
>which is the source of the aesthetic materials."
>
>My problem is with the phrase "irreducible, ineffable, aesthetic
materials".
>Perhaps "materials" is just a bad choice of word. It sounds very SOM to me.
>So does "composed of". "a knower will be thought of as conscious because he
>is composed of [certain] materials."! Hmmm.
>
>To me Whitehead is a better guide here. He talks of prehensions, which is
>just as unclear in some ways. However he would suggest that it is our
>ability to apprehend quality that is basic. At the risk of being labelled
>irremediably SOMish, I would further argue that our awareness of quality is
>dialogical, in that there is something apprehended, there is a self that
>apprehends, and that "our ability to apprehend quality" is a process. Maybe
>to God, if he or she exists, quality can be observed as a noun. But to me,
>as a human agent, quality is in the flavour of my encounter with whatever
>is, and is much more adjectival or adverbial.
>
>I would further argue that quality comes in at least four flavours, the
>first being the biological variety shared with other animals, and which is
a
>given in the experience of living things. This 'quality' is the substance
of
>animal experience, and is the totality of what animals apprehend. But
people
>are different. That is why we argue about free will. An animal does not
have
>an option; it responds to the quality it apprehends. While it may balance a
>number of inputs to arrive at an outcome, it is really not free to choose.
>This is the flavour of quality Pirsig is describing when he says that what
>does not have quality cannot be apprehended. "A thing that has no value
does
>not exist." (Lila Ch 8)
>
>The three other flavours of quality are perhaps unique to humans. They are
>the aesthetic, or artistic quality, mentioned by Northrop; the good, the
>essence of social quality, incorporating morality and justice; and the
true,
>the test of intellectual and scientific quality. These seem to me
>self-evidently real. These are the flavours of quality Pirsig is describing
>when he says "One can then examine intellectual realities ... simply to
>enjoy and keep those that are of value" (Lila, Ch 8).
>
>I expect that there is a further, fifth, flavour of quality, which is the
>apprehension of meaning. This, I suspect, is what Pirsig was actually
>pursuing, and is encountered in higher levels of human experience accessed
>through a practice, usually meditative. This is what is missing in modern
>Western society, according to Pirsig, and is perceived as an underlying low
>quality to our lives. "There was no way you could say why this quality was
>no good. You just felt it." (Lila Ch22)
>
>In speaking of flavours of quality, I wish to indicate that these processes
>are similar in that they involve encounters with transformative potency,
yet
>they differ in significant ways, and cannot be reduced to one amorphous
>"Quality". "Quality" is an intellectual construct, and in my view does
>little to assist our understanding of this very significant field. It
>actually is theology, at least as Pirsig uses it.
>
>John B
>
>
>
>
>
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