Dear Platt,
I'll try another type of response to your 9/11 8:50 -0500 and
15/11 14:45 -0500 postings.
As you seem to be a great admirer of art, I would like to point
out to you, that my postings on this list can be read as a story.
It is my story of the development of the MoQ (or my MoQ),
comparable to "Lila", which is Pirsig's story of the first stage
of this development (his MoQ). Like Pirsig's story it doesn't
only contain metaphysics, but also applies a MoQ to practical and
philosophical problems in order to indicate how they may be
solved. Such solutions are only provisional and not final,
because it is not really possible "to immediately apply
metaphysical insights to solve all philosophical problems without
development of the other philosophical systems" (3DW 7/7
11:13 -0500). As I stated 30/10 15:28 +0100 my metaphysics
contains "a set of answers to the questions 'How can we know?'
(epistemology), 'What can we know?' (ontology) and 'How can we
know what we should do?' (deontology)." It doesn't contain
answers to the question "What should we do?" (ethics). (Unlike
Marco 2/11 16:56 +0100 I take ethics to be a philosophical system
and morality/morals to be a system of ideas as expressed in
everyday practice, e.g. commercial morality or Christian
morality. I am used to catch Marco's distinction between general
criteria and criteria for everyday choices and behavior in the
concept of "values" versus the concept of "norms". Answering your
question of 5/11 14:45 -0500: an evolutionary morality takes
evolutionary success as an indication of moral superiority.)
Please don't confuse my story with a work of science, that can be
dismissed as less than truthful when it can be shown to break a
scientific rule of conduct or when it doesn't consistently follow
the example of the founder of the paradigm.
It is my story. It is meaningful for me. If it is not (very)
meaningful for you, so be it. My story does not need to be the
same as yours, even if both are part of a larger story, the story
we are creating together on this list. My story is also part of a
Quaker story, a Dutch story etc. whereas your story is also part
of an American story (like Pirsig's story) and (according to
Jonathan 4/11 17:35 +0200) a right-wing republican story.
A story can be told in many different ways, without becoming
unrecognizably different. This freedom makes it possible for
different versions of the same story to be part of different
larger stories. My story of the development of the MoQ can be
part of a pacifist story while your story of the development of
the MoQ is not, while both can still be part of the larger story
we are creating here.
In other words: my blood pressure doesn't rise even one millibar
if you point out that according to his story Pirsig "doesn't
always consider violence to be immoral." Pirsig's story is not
identical with "the static intellectual pattern of values called
the MoQ". The MoQ is a pattern that we experience in the larger
story of which Pirsig's story is only the first chapter. Any
pattern has exceptions (otherwise it would be a logical necessity
and it would not be experienced as a pattern). I see other
elements of Pirsig's story as exceptions than you do. And large
parts of his story are only application of MoQ and not MoQ
itself, only indicating how ethical questions may be solved,
prior to the
development of a real Q-ethics that is needed for a more final
solution. Only the further development of the pattern (the growth
of the larger story that allows future readers of Pirsig and of
us to differentiate better between essentials, exceptions and
application) can prove either your or my version of the story to
be of more quality.
A story can contain surprising twists, like Pirsig's story when
he dropped the classical/romantic first division of Quality from
"ZAMM" in favor of the static/Dynamic one in the course of
"Lila". Pirsig justifies some violence in the first chapter of
the larger story. Who knows what will happen in the next chapters
(e.g. when you Americans or we Westerners would become less
dominant on this list...)?
I am not a great artist, if only because neither English nor
American is my mother tongue. I can use a word like "legitimize"
and mean "justify" rather than "legalize". The context in which I
use it should be enough to clarify what I mean (and other readers
DID understand me correctly).
Definitions are not the way to clarify things in a story. I wrote
23/9 23:51 +0200:
"Whenever a society ... develops internal inequality of any kind
... some will feel privileged and others will feel
underprivileged. Regardless of luck, virtue or whatever being at
the root of the inequality, the privileged will develop systems
of ideas to legitimize their privileges and the underprivileged
will develop systems of ideas to legitimize redistribution."
I wrote 21/10 11:50 +0100:
"my suggestion that American wealth is due to flocking together
AND valuing wealth over other things ... was ... fuelled by ...
shame ... that the same amount of effort yields me so much more
wealth than it does for instance an Afghan peasant."
So "privileged" for me refers primarily to a feeling connected
with inequality, regardless of the roots of that inequality.
"Privileged" and "underprivileged" is almost synonymous for me
with "haves" and "have-nots". It only implies (for me) more of a
moral obligation to do something about it to the extent that the
"underprivileged" are not able to do so themselves.
In a story you can make denigratory remarks about opponents you
exclude from the creation of the larger story you want your story
to be part of. (Like Pirsig does in "Lila" ch. 24 by ascribing a
morality consisting of "a kind of vague, amorphous soup of
sentiments known as 'human rights'" to "liberal intellectuals
like himself" "in the fifties and sixties". Note the self-mockery
of "like himself" though.) You're not required to accurately
present the views of your opponents before countering them, as in
a work of science.
It is not wise however to make such remarks about the views of
those you are co-creating the story of the MoQ with (or worse
about their behavior or even worse about their persons: ad
hominem attacks). That invites similar counter-remarks,
escalating into either ad hominem attacks or ignoring of your
contributions. Both will sooner or later effectively exclude you
from the project. Not everyone is able or patient enough to
refrain from criticism on your person and to keep separating
criticism on your behavior from criticism on your views if you
regularly appear too denigratory (even if you compose your
denigratory remarks from quotes of Pirsig Himself).
You ask 15/11 14:45 -0500 why the burden is on you "to refer to
the values of others when they don't refer to mine except to
disagree". In my 28/10 22:21 +0100 posting I however I
consciously mentioned the values of "freedom, justice and
brotherhood" and "justice, peace and integrity of creation"
because I supposed those would be among your values.
Aren't "freedom, justice and brotherhood" the values on which the
American Declaration of Independence is based? I admit to a
regrettable lack in my education in that I didn't have to
memorize it at school. Neither do I have a framed copy on my
wall, like most Americans seemingly. So I couldn't easily check.
(-: (I have checked it by now in your National Archives, though.)
Someway back I deduced from some of your postings that you
consider yourself to be a Christian, so I also supposed that you
might be sympathetic to the values of the "conciliar process" of
the World Council of Churches some 10 years ago: "justice, peace
and integrity of creation".
So I WAS trying to refer to your values. If these are not among
your values, please tell me what ARE your values for future
reference.
Are the values "freedom, justice, brotherhood, peace and
integrity of creation" to be denounced as "sentiments" "having no
source in a rationally-based morality" making "morals become
relative and arbitrary, their meaning determined by whose side
you are on"? In that case most of your national identity as
Americans (if I read your Declaration of Independence correctly
and if I am rightly informed about its present symbolic role) is
based on a "relative and arbitrary morality".
I do think that these values (and most of your Declaration of
Independence) can be derived from a rationally-based morality (or
ethics, as I would call any rationally based system of values and
norms) EVEN if they can be at the same time (for less rational
people) sentiments. But we still have quite some work to do to
develop a Q-ethics applying a MoQ in order to test this
statement. "Lila" doesn't contain such an ethics. If anything is
"relative and arbitrary", it is labeling your opponents as
"biology" and rallying others under the label of "intellect" to
support "society" in crushing them.
Your apology for not clarifying what you mean by "SOM language"
(9/11 8:50 -0500) was unnecessary. Maybe you were "not referring
to parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, subjects and objects,
but to the metaphysical assumptions that underlie the language".
I consciously connect them though. "The assumed dualities of
subject/object, mind/matter, self/other, observer/observed,
internal/external, implicit/explicit, above/below, before/after,
static/dynamic, etc., etc. form the basis for language and
thought" BECAUSE the very structure of language presupposes some
of them. Without the dualities of subject - object,
adjective/adverb - noun and intransitive verb - transitive verb
your "assumed dualities" would be far less "thinkable".
You may remember my 8/10 23:35 +0200 posting in which I described
my struggle to clear and eventually take off my neo-Marxist
spectacles. There I referred to psychologist Lacan according to
whom the human psyche splits in consciousness and
subconsciousness because thinking requires language and language
presupposes consciously acting subjects. Althusser extended this
analysis to the creation of ideology because of the distortion of
experience by language: using language compels people to
experience themselves as "I", as a whole, to formulate plans and
motives for action, and to expel their being influenced by
material
circumstances from their consciousness. "Free will" and
"individual autonomy" are only language constructs, only
ideology, according to Althusser, but they are stubbornly
defended by humans, even to the extent of denying their real
material interests...
I would add (and there I take off my neo-Marxist spectacles) that
"determinism", "causal relations" and treating humans as no more
than social animals (exponents of class interests) is equally
wrong and resulting from of distortion of experience by language.
It means "objectifying" everything, even one's self. Only
"classes" are subjects in the (neo-)Marxist "Weltanschauung"
(overall worldview).
The social patterns of values which a neo-Marxist (wrongly)
interprets as "determined events" and their "causes" ARE patterns
and therefore relatively static, but they leave freedom for
exceptions, that can form new patterns. They form (with the
systems of ideas that legitimize/justify them) a kind of
"grammar" of social events. Like the grammar of a language, it
makes it very difficult to deviate (on pain of social exclusion
cf. on pain of being misunderstood), but not impossible.
You write: "Nothing seems more 'real' than the separation between
what goes on inside our skins and the world outside." Yet, the
separation is only a language construct, as "inside" and
"outside" our skins are part of the same patterns of value.
Still, treating "inside" just like SOM treats "outside" (as
object) is wrong as well. A human can create exceptions to the
static patterns of values he/she is part of and become part of
new static patterns of values.
I think the best basis for a fruitful continuation of our
discussion is the agreement I read at the end of your 9/11
8:50 -0500 posting with my statement of 6/11 22:27 +0100:
"The fact that 'Pirsig's metaphysical somersault' (Bo 6/11 9:04
+0100) wasn't complete and that he still confused things and
patterns at the end of 'Lila' doesn't excuse us for making the
same mistake."
Maybe you can describe in your words where Pirsig should be
amended to make his metaphysical somersault complete?
Hope this was worth waiting for.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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