Hi DMB, Glenn, Bo, Squonk:
I guess this passage from Wilber as quoted by David B. convinced
Glenn that Wilber and Pirsig were indeed birds of feather:
> "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."
DMB commented:
> 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.
For added evidence, DMB quoted Wilber as follows:
> "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."
I suppose by quoting Wilber's reference to a "primordial ground" prior
to subject and object and "primacy of immediate awareness" we are to
conclude that Pirsig and Wilber are two peas in pod. Well, close but no
cigar. (On second thought, not even close.)
Wilber says nothing, absolutely, positively nothing about Quality being
primordial reality. Nor does he say a word about Dynamic and static
Quality being the first cut or initial duality. Nor does he propose even for
a minute that the world is a MORAL order.
No, he's a Subject/Object man through and through, dividing the world
into four quadrants after an initial split of interior vs. exterior (subjective
vs. objective). (See page 43--Chart of the Four Quadrants, A Theory of
Everything.) It never has occurred to him in his wildest dreams that all
he knows are patterns of value. (Nor did it occur to anyone else in the
whole history of philosophy before RMP.)
Glenn is worried that both Wilber and Pirsig are anti-science. Well, not
to worry. Both accept science on its own terms. It's just that those
terms don't include everything there is. Even scientists admit as much.
Wilber has many good ideas to offer, but a revolutionary metaphysics
is not one of them.
Platt
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