From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 27 2002 - 16:41:56 GMT
Hi Platt:
>Well, I don't know much about "many contemporary philosophers" but
>perhaps instead of mind-body it would have been clearer if I had said
>mind-matter. To me the appearance-reality split is exactly the same as
>the split between the mental world and material world which, in turn, is
>the same as subject-object split. (Better to leave "reality" out of the
>equation because in a larger sense "appearances" are "real," too).
The problem is still the same. The philosophers I read and talk about are
those that don't speak of mind-matter and I'm going to resist conflating
mind-matter and appearance-reality. I think its easy to conflate the two
(or three, including subject-object) because over the course of
intellectual history, the three have been conflated. Materialists have
thought that the mental world, the world of mind, the subjective world was
mere appearance and that the real world was simply composed of matter, or
the objective world. Idealists had it flipped. Matter was simply an
appearance of the reality of your mind. Plato had the same thing. The
world of Forms was the Real world (which could only be apprehended through
the mind) and the Realm of Senses was mere appearances. The rhetoric of
Christians also have it. Heaven, something that transcends both mind and
matter, is the Real and the Earth is something merely transitory, an
appearance that will pass. But the increasing sophistication of
philosophers over the years has started to pull apart these distinctions,
make light of them, and try and do something about them. To conflate them
again, to me, is to regress to an even more outdated vocabulary then the
appearance-reality (representational) vocabulary that Rorty is suggesting
we get rid of.
>Absent the context in which Sellars made that assertion, he seems to
>deny that my cat is aware--a rather dubious conclusion don't you agree?
Certainly from no context, but that's why I added some context for you. I
did that in a post to Scott from the "Absolute Quality between ZMM and
Lila" thread (Nov 14). Because you might not have read it, I'll paste in
the important parts and refer you to the rest of the post for context:
----------------------------
"In fact, this seems to me simply a reformulation of the Sellarsian
linguistification of experience that "all awareness is a linguistic affair."
Note, though, this is all post-language. I assume we can conceive of a
pre-language baby or gorilla as being able to deal with particulars without
universals-as-linguistic-concepts. Pirsig offers us a good way formulating
what the pre-linguistic universals they use would be: predictions of
patterns of behavior. They can set things into different patterns and
predict outcomes. If they couldn't, animals wouldn't be able to survive
and gorillas and babies wouldn't be able to learn language. Language is
simply an extension of this patterning, predicting ability that biological
entities seem to have. Now, Pirsig would also add that this continues down
into inorganic patterns. And this is what I find to be the most
fascinating about what Pirsig does: he blurs the line of who has and
doesn't have consciousness/awareness. He says that rocks have patterning
ability, too. It just doesn't seem to us, though, that they have
predicting ability. But that's an observational question, just as relating
language using animals to non-language using animals is: we observe them
behaving in a manner that resembles our own and we can use a word to refer
to both: prediction. Equally, we can observe rocks as behaving in a manner
that resembles our own (and the non-linguistic animals) and we can use a
word to refer to both: pattern. That is the stroke of genius that Pirsig
brings in in Lila.
Now, I think mystics (specifically you Scott, and I think Platt and Squonk
would say this) would want to say that not all awareness for linguistic
creatures is linguistic. This I deny. It begs the question with a
different langauge game that I've already left. Granted, I'm begging the
question in return with my alternative, but that's the nature of the game.
My only argument can be the assertion that the language game I'm working
with has greater possibilities."
-------------------------
>My dictionary defines "intuition" as "direct perception independent of
>any reasoning process; immediate apprehension." In other words, direct
>experience, pure awareness, non-verbal understanding, a visceral fact
>intellectually meaningless but possessing value. I don't think you can
>change your intuitions any more than you can change you sense of
>being. Nor do I understand why anyone, if even they could, would want
>to. Your intuitive sense of Quality is the first step in your ability to
>survive.
I agree with Scott when he says, "I am in disagreement with Pirsig about
sticking to dictionary definitions. One can't do that and philosophize,
since the words of interest do not have clear denotations. Short of
neologizing, the only way to be creative in philosophy is to shift
connotations, e.g., of the words 'subject' and 'object'." I think I've
been saying very similar things for a while now and still shake my head in
amazement that Pirsig, a philosopher and one who shifts the meaning of
words himself (let's see ... Quality?), would say such a conservative and
reactionary thing. One sticks to the dictionary when one wants to stop change.
Now, if you want to keep intuitions to mean what the dictionary says,
that's fine. That's why I refered to this difference earlier as a mere
semantic difference because you still have to respond to what I'm saying
about why you believe Pirsig on stoves over Rorty on stoves. Now, if you
respond by saying, "I have an intuition of Pirsig's stove example and we
can't change our intuitions," then you're responding, but you are also
begging the question.
Matt
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