Glenn, Platt and y'all:
I've re-named the thread because it has nothing to do with the middle east.
Platt said:
Thanks for confirming my claim. Wilber's "it-domain" is objective. His "I
and we domains" are subjective. Strictly old school divisions.
Glenn said:
I agree with Platt. This quote doesn't attempt to ground a
subject/object reality into a third category as Pirsig does. However,
since science is the hand-maiden of the SOM, perhaps David thinks
that rants against science, like the one below, are indicative of an
anti-S/O bias. In fact it is just an anti-O bias.
DMB says:
Hmmm. Very bizzare. You both seem oblivious to the obvious. Its hard to take
your objections seriously when it seems that you don't even understand what
you're reading, but I'll waste some time and provide an answer anyway.
Wilber is complaining about the dominant world view in the same way that
Pirsig does. What Wilber calls "scientism" is the same thing as Pirsig's
"amoral scientific objectivity". Both of them are pointing to the same
problem; the divorce and then the denial of moral and spiritual realities
from scientific truth. It is an historical development also known as "the
death of god". Perhaps you've heard? On the problems with SOM, from page
232, thus spake Wilber...
"The problem is not solved, but rather dissolved - and not by reducing the
subject to the object, or the object to the subject, but by recognizing the
primordial ground of which each is a partial reflection. Which is why the
dilemmas INHERENT in those dualisms - between mind and body, mind and brain,
consciousness and form, mind and nature, subject and object - CANNOT be
solved on te relative plane - which is why that problem has NEVER been
solved by conventional philosophy. The problem is not solved, but rather
dissolved, in the primordial state, which otherwise LEAVES THE DUALISMS JUST
AS THEY ARE, possessing a certain conventional or relative reality, real
enough in their own domains, but not absolute."
Its cleat to me that Pirsig says essentially the same thing; subjects and
objects loose their bedrock metaphysical status, but are retained in the
larger system of the MOQ and are reintegrated into the levels of static
pattens. Elsewhere, Wilber even uses the same word to describe conventional
reality; patterns.
Further, yesterday's Wilber quote was presented in response to Platt's claim
that Wilber is "strictly a subject-object" man. So I simply pullled up a few
lines that clearly show Wilber complaining about it. As to the "third
category", that Pirsig goes into with his mystical, radical empiricism,
non-dual quality event stuff, Wilber goes there too. He even points to
William James, just as Pirsig does. From the same book on pages 232-4.
"I always found it fascinating that both William James and Bertrand Russell
agreed on this crucial issue, the nonduality of subject and object in the
primacy of immediate awareness. Now we have to be very careful with these
terms (radical empirisism) because "empiricism" doesn't mean just sensory
experience, it means experience itself, in any domain. It means immediate
prehension, immediate experience, immediate awareness. And William James set
out to demonstrate that this pure nondual immediateness is the "basic stuff"
of reality, so to speak, and that both subject and object, mind and body,
inside and outside, are derivative or secondary. They come later, they come
after, the primacy of immediateness, which is the ultimate reality, as it
were. Of course, virtually all of the mystical or contemplative sages had
been saying this for a few millennia, but James to his eternal credit
brought it crashing into the mainstream ... and convinced Russell of its
truth in the process. Russell had a rather tin understanding of the fact
that the great comtemplative philosopher-sages - from Plotinus to Augustine
to Eckhart (Pirsig's favorite mystic) to Schelling to Schopenhauer to
Emerson - had already solved or dissovled this subject/object duality."
Glenn said:
While I agree that scientific results have a greater chance of being true
than other pursuits of truth, I would be interested to know what Wilber
thinks science is actually denying in the "I and the we domains". He doesn't
say, but if he is talking about things like ESP, alien abductions, and
Shirley McClaine's past lives, I think it's proper for empirical science to
seriously question these claims of truth. In fact, only a very small number
of scientists and critical thinkers bother to do so. Certainly the media
doesn't. If he is speaking to things like beauty, justice, and patriotism,
I think he would be overstating his case as to the influence of scientism.
DMB says:
Alien abductions, ESP and Shirley McClaine's past lives? Oh, please. In
order to understand the solution (MOQ) one first has to understand the
problem (SOM). I don't even know where to begin. I mean, if you've read Lila
and still don't see the problem with scientism, well then I just don't know
what to tell you.
WILBER:
"Only objective its with simple location were really real. The entire
interior
dimensions were completely gutted, and the ghost in the machine began its
sad and lonely modern moan, a haunting cry made all the more
plaintive in that it had not even the power to attract attention."
Glenn:
Note the over-the-top belief that science has "completely gutted" the
"entire interior dimensions" followed by the sad-sack resentment of modern
man. I suppose rhetoric like this is the only way he feels he can attract
attention. Reasoned, level-headed thinking just won't do.
DMB says:
If you think Wilber is over-the-top then so is Pirsig, because he says
essentially the same thing. "the metaphysics of substance...regards both
society and intellect (subjects) as possessions of biology (objects). It
says society AND intellect don't have substance and therefore can't be real.
It says biology is where reality stops. Society and intellect are ephemeral
POSSESSIONS of reality." (Lila page 265.) And I suppose that Pirsig is
equally a sad-sack resenter too. "A scientific, intellectual culture had
become a culture of million of isolated people living and dying in little
cells of psychic solitary confinement, unable to talk to one another,
really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it
is impossible to do so." (page 283)
Which sounds alot like...
WILBER:
"When only objective its with simple location are really real, then the
mind itself is a tabula that is totally rasa, utterly blank until filled
with PICTURES or representations of the only reality there was: objective
and sensory nature. There is no real SPIRIT, there is no real MIND, there
is only empirical nature. No superconsciousness, no self-conscious, only
subconscious processes scurrying endlessly, meaninglessly, in a vast system
of interwoven its." Ken Wilber's A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING pages 264-5.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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